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COPYRICHT DEPOSIT. 



THE ETERNAL 
RIDDLE 



BY 
JOHN WIRT DUNNING 




BOSTON 
SHERMAN, FRENCH &r COMPANY 

1911 









Copyright 19 11 
Sherman, French & Company 



©CLA286713 



CONTENTS 



I. 


What Is Man? 


Fage 

1 


II. 


Immortality ..... 


13 


III. 


Is There A God I Can Trust? . 


29 


IV. 


Why Do We Suffer? . . 


43 


V. 


What Shall I Think About The Bible? 


57 


VI. 


Is Prayer A Rational Occupation? . 


15 


vtt. 


Can I Get Back To Childhood? 


91 


VIII. 


Can I Forget The Past? . 


105 


IX. 


What Is It To Be Saved? 


123 


X. 


What About Our Sins? 


135 


XI. 


How Near May I Come To Heaven 






And Miss It? .... 


151 


XII. 


What Is The Supreme Mission Of The 






Christian? , 


165 


XIII. 


What Are The Signs Of A Christian? 


183 


XIV. 


What Shall I Think About Jesus? . 


199 


XV. 


What Is Christian Faith? 


217 


XVI. 


Does The World Need A New Re- 






ligion? ..... 


231 



I 

WHAT IS MAN ? 



WHAT IS MAN? 

Thou hast made him but little lower than God. 
Psalm 8: 5. 

Man is an eternal riddle. At every stage of 
civilization low or high, at every turn of human 
experience there confronts the individual the prob- 
lem of his origin. Beside every cradle where a 
new-born child is sleeping, in the busy whirl of 
active life, and over every new-made grave, the 
question of the Psalmist is being asked, "What is 
man ?" 

The Sphynx proposed first this ancient riddle, 
"What creature is that which in the morning 
walks upon four legs, upon two at noon, and upon 
three in the evening." It was long before an an- 
swer came. Such a creature could not be found. 
It was Oedipus who finally answered, "That crea- 
ture which walks upon four legs in the morning, 
two at noon and three at night is man. In the 
morning of life, he creeps like the beast. At his 
noontide hour he stands erect. When the evening 
shadows gather he must have a staff." 

But how terribly inadequate — how incomplete — 
this answer to the question, "What is man?" 

Turn to the physiologist, and ask him. "Man 
is a living organism composed of lime, and water, 
a conglomerate of cell life and a certain amount 
of chemical substance." 

Ask the biologist and the evolutionist. "Man 

1 



2 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

is a lineal descendant from a lower form of life, 
resembling the ape. Out of this early ancestor 
has developed the whole of his present life. He 
is what he is because of the environment in which 
he is placed, and were it not for the inexplicable 
workings of chance, he would be dwelling still in 
the branches of an African palm tree chattering 
amid a horde of his simian brothers. He is 'a 
featherless biped without wings.' " 

Ask the psychologist. "Man is a bundle of 
ideas and habits that have fixed themselves upon 
the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres. His emo- 
tions, his will, his thoughts, are expressions of the 
physical mutations of the molecules on the surface 
of the brain." 

Ask the philosopher. "Man is a wave on the 
sea of Infinity." He is the "expression of a Di- 
vine Idea." He is an "atom in the stream of God 
consciousness." He is "not a distinct entity, but 
his soul is absorbed into the soul of the Divine 
All." He is merely a mode of God's expression 
and not a being of himself. 

How bewildering have been these answers. The 
modern mind has lost itself in the realm of specu- 
lation. The eternal riddle remains unsolved. In 
despair Heine says, "Man is an age-long riddle 
only fools expect to solve." He is the chance 
child of Fate's trickery, and "none can tell a man's 
appointed lot." 



WHAT IS MAN 3 

"Throughout untold aeons vast, 

She let him lurk and cower, 
'Twould seem he climbed at last, 

In mere fortuitous hour; 
Child of a thousand chances 

'Neath an indifferent sky." 

What utter failure in these answers to solve the 
eternal riddle! How sadly they fail to tell us 
what we really are. "An awful something burns 
within our clay," that these do not explain. If 
these are all, then 

"Man is a falling flower, and Fame in vain, 
Strives to protract his momentous reign 
Beyond his bounds, to match the rolling tide 
On whose dread waves the long Olympiads ride." 

But man is more. His own heart declares him to 
be. "Thou hast made him a little lower than God." 
This was the raptured expression of a human 
heart as it contemplated man's exalted station. 
To be a member of the human race the Psalmist 
declares is to come of great lineage. It is to have 
God as the Great Ancestor. It is to scale the 
heights of being, until one stands in the very 
presence of the Infinite Father. In spite of the 
speculations of philosophers, and the conclusions 
of materialists, the soul knows itself to be greater 
than the house in which it lives. There is a con- 
sciousness of a spiritual self, that puts on man a 
superlative dignity, and compels him to say with 
Aratas, "We are also his Offspring." "Thou hast 
made him a little lower than God." 



4 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Man cannot stand amid the wonders of nature, 
and not feel the breath of the Infinite blowing 
through his being. As he contemplates the glori- 
ous dignity of the great Creator, and sees his own 
exalted station, the throb of kinship stirs his 
heart. The feelings of that poverty-stricken 
painter as he gazed upon the work of the master, 
and forgetting his own failures exclaimed, "I too 
am a Painter," are the feelings of man as he con- 
templates his Creator's glory. 

I think it must have been David who wrote this 
eighth Psalm. How often as a shepherd boy on 
the Judean Hills, in the silent watches of the 
night, beside the campfire, he had tended his 
father's sheep. How often in his solitary watch, 
he must have gazed up into the clear Judean sky, 
and seen the starry hosts of heaven, in all their 
glory, marshalled before their king, sending their 
message straight to the heart of the shepherd boy. 
No wonder as he gazed up into "the great and 
awful city of God," the very vastness of it ap- 
palled him. 

"When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fin- 
gers, 
The moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, 
What is man that thou art mindful of him? 
And the son of man that thou visitest him/' 

From this vision of Heaven's pageantry, he turns 
to his own puny life, his littleness, his obscurity. 
Can it be that he is greater than the stars ! 



WHAT IS MAN 5 

He gazes inward, and there he sees a holy kin- 
ship with the Maker of the stars. A thrill of 
pride runs through his being as he realizes that 
he alone can comprehend these wonderful glories 
of creation, and in them hear the voice of God. 
The sheep that sleep in silence around him hear 
no heavenly message. Their eyes are closed to 
the beauties of the firmament, and in the exulta- 
tion of manhood, David sings, 

"Thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
And crowned him with glory and honor. 
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works 

of thy hands; 
Thou hast put all things under his feet." 

After all, the soul that sees the grand designs of 
nature's glories, and asserts its power over the 
"beasts of the field, the fowls of the air and the 
fish of the sea," must be greater than them all — 
kin to the Creator. 

Such feelings have come to all. It may have 
been on some bright winter morning at the foot 
of a magnificent mountain peak, whose summit 
gleams in dazzling crystal, as its myriad flakes 
reflect the morning sun. It may have been beside 
the mighty ocean, whose billows the ships that 
men have builded, plough in safety. It may have 
come beside the campfire in the midst of evening's 
silence, as the eye gazes, like David's, into a firma- 
ment of whose vastness he never dreamed. "How 
awful is God's glory." 



6 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Then there comes the feeling of wonder, that 
man has been exalted to a place of pre-eminence 
in all this universe. In the midst of all creations 
of which man knows, he stands supreme — the pin- 
nacle of them all. Why has God chosen me to 
rule over the beasts of the field, and to "have do- 
minion over the works of His hands?" My own 
heart tells me, It is my kinship with God. I may 
have come as the evolutionist tells me, up from 
lower forms of life, but somewhere in my upward 
journey, God met me, and breathed into me the 
breath of His life. I may be a chemical compound 
as the physiologist says, or a bundle of habits as 
the psychologist declares, but there is something 
in me that none of them can explain. It is the 
immortal image of God. I am His child! 

How close are the ties of kinship. Nature al- 
ways draws her kindred together in loving bands. 
The branches of the willow, on the river bank 
bend to kiss the lily that floats upon the stream. 
There is kinship there. The mother wren dies 
upon her nest fighting with the sparrows for the 
life of her brood. Hers is a kindred love. 

In a rich man's house are many treasures. Its 
ceilings are wrought with costly gold, exquisite 
rugs are on its floors, fine wrought tapestries are 
on its walls, its shelves are filled with rare vases 
and heavy plate from Oriental workshops, a hun- 
dred servants throng to do his bidding, and all 
that money can buy is his. 

But more than all these there is another treas- 



WHAT IS MAN 7 

ure. The little child that bears his image and his 
name, is the greatest treasure of them all. It can 
feel as he feels ; it can know and understand his 
love; it can come to him in its hour of joy or sor- 
row, and tell him of its pleasures or its woes. It 
is the child of his love — a being like himself, whom 
he has brought to life. No wonder he cherishes 
it and loves it, and among all his treasures, he 
holds it the dearest and the best. 

Here may we find our answer to the eternal 
riddle. The treasure house of God is full of price- 
less wealth. Its measure is untold. The heavens 
declare His glory in the treasuries of the stars, the 
firmament is His handiwork, the rushing rivers 
and the lofty mountains, the hoar frost and the 
fleecy clouds, the mustard seed and the mighty 
oak, "the earth and the fullness thereof, 55 — all are 
His, unlimited, unnumbered, unknown! 

But / above all these am the child of His love. 
I am a spiritual being, into whom He has breathed 
the breath of His own life, and on whose soul He 
has stamped the image of His being. It matters 
not if my body be formed of the dust. My soul 
is in the image of God ! "Like as a Father pitieth 
his children the Lord loveth them that fear him." 

"I con my history cast in rocks, and trace 

The line of life through ages closed in stone; 

And all, minute or mighty, is mine own, 
Outworn, cast off, no longer fit to grace 

The larger hope that mounts to nobler place. 
So I am bound to all the vast Unknown, 



8 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

The dread and awful eras long outgrown. 

Yet even with God do I stand face to face ! 
I, of the dust born, know that unto Him, 

The Life, my being's lineal currents run! 
From Him I sprung; I am His child; a soul 

Thick veiled, led on by Him through cycles dim, 
Whom He will lead until the end be won, 

My manhood rounded full, a perfect whole. " 

I may be appalled by the vastness of the house 
I live in, but in love's realm the foot rule does not 
count. I may be cast down by the feeling of deep 
unworthiness, as I see the black spectre of my sin 
rise before me. But my very capacity for sin is 
the badge of my high origin. After the very 
worst has been said of me, even though I sit a 
prodigal child in a far country, there is some- 
thing that sin has not destroyed. Like the music 
of a far off song I can hear the Father's voice 
calling, "My child." 

It is strange indeed that any child of God 
should forsake his lofty dignity as the kin of God; 
strange that he should choose to lose his crowning 
glory, and become a prodigal child, marring and 
destroying the features of his divine heritage, by 
the scars and rags of sin. But it has been the 
history of the race, that it has forgotten that on 
its brow it bears the marks of the divine. We 
have yielded to the tempter, and forsaken the kin- 
ship of God for the company of evil. 

And now in our grief and shame, as we realize 
the treasure we have lost, God comes to us again 



WHAT IS MAN 9 

with assurance of a kinsman-Redeemer, who shall 
be for us the Way of Restoration into the Father's 
image. As once He glorified us by giving us His 
image, now He honors man by Himself becoming 
man. 

' 'Twas much that man was made like God before, 
But that God should be made like man, much 
more/' 

If man has lost God's image, he may recover it 
again. There is at-one-ment. "I am the Way, the 
Truth and the Life." Because man is more than 
the stick, the star, the rock or beast, he is worth 
redeeming. 

"When the fight begins within himself, 
A Man's worth something — God stoops o'er his 

head, 
Satan looks up between his feet — both pull — 
He's left, himself, in the middle; the soul wakes, 
God wins. Prolong the battle through his life! 
Never leave growing till the world to come I" 

Man may be in ruins, but he is still at the sum- 
mit of the world, "but a little lower than God." 
Ruin that he is, he possesses vaster power than the 
rushing stars, or foaming cataracts. He is God's 
child. There is no rest, no peace for him outside 
the bosom of his Father. As Augustine said: 
"Thou hast made us for Thyself, and in vain do 
we seek rest until we find it in Thee." "The 
spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." The 
same light shines from his face as shines from 



10 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

the face of the Father of all. There is a hun- 
gering in every human heart, that will not be 
satisfied with aught save the Father's smile. 
Away in the far country that longing seizes on 
the heart of the divine ruin. There is a hun- 
gering for the Father's house, and the joys of 
sonship once more. Then over the hills of life 
comes Jesus, "the first-born among many 
brethren," to call the "sons and daughters of 
the Almighty," to enter once more the inheri- 
tance of their ancestral image. 

The answer to the eternal riddle is that ancient 
word which comes to us out of the far away dawn 
of man's first morning: "And God said let us 
make man in our image after our likeness ; and let 
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the birds of heaven, and over every creeping 
thing that creepeth on the earth. And God created 
man in his own image, in the image of God created 
he him." 

"My Father is rich in houses and lands, 
He holdeth the wealth of the world in his hands; 
Of rubies and diamonds, of silver and gold, 
His coffers are full; he has riches untold. 

A tent or a cottage, why should I care ; 
They're building a palace for me over there. 
Though exiled from home, yet still may I sing. 
Glory to God, I'm the Child of a King. 

I'm the child of a King, 
The child of a King, 
With Jesus my Saviour 
I'm the child of a King." 



II 

IMMORTALITY 



"When earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes 
are twisted and dried, 

When the oldest colors have faded and the young- 
est critics have died, 

We shall rest, and faith we shall need it — lie down 
for an aeon or two, 

Till the Master of all Good Workmen shall set us 
at work anew. 

And those that are good shall be happy; they shall 
sit in a golden chair; 

They shall splash at ten league canvas with brushes 
of comets' hair; 

They shall have real saints to draw from — Magda- 
lene, Peter and Paul; 

They shall work for an age at a sitting and never 
grow tired at all. 

And only the Master shall praise us and only the 

Master shall blame; 
And no one shall work for money and no one shall 

work for fame; 
But each for the joy of working, and each in his 

separate star, 
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of 

Things as They Are." 

Rudyard Kipling 



IMMORTALITY 

If a man die shall he live again? Job 14: 14. 

It is a solemn thought that we all must die. We 
are a race of ephemeridae, and our life is "swifter 
than a weaver's shuttle." Herodotus tells us that 
it was the custom of the Egyptians at their ban- 
quet tables to have passed among them a miniature 
mummy case, in which lay a human image. And 
the slave who carried it whispered in the ear of 
each, "Be happy now, for this is what you come to 
at last." 

We need no ceremony like this to remind us that 
this life is not forever. 

I stood in the fields one gray morning in the 
twilight of approaching day, beside the mangled 
bodies of seven of my companions in travel. A 
half hour before, two engines had crashed together 
in the darkness of the early hours ; and these poor 
fellows, travelling in the day coach, had passed 
into eternity without a second's warning. 

A man came and stood beside me. I recognized 
him as one I had seen drinking and gambling in 
the smoking compartment the night before. His 
pale cheeks and hollow voice showed him to be the 
victim of terrible fright. 

"May I ask you a question, sir?" he said. 

I told him to ask on. 

"I have never been so close to death before, and 
this accident has completely unnerved me. I want 

13 



14 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

to know if you think this life is all of it? One of 
those bodies there is of a man I have travelled 
with for years. Do you think that when a man 
dies he lives again?" 

He did not realize that he had asked the oldest 
question of the ages, and the newest. "If a man 
die shall he live again?" So long as men are dying 
we can never get away from that question. In our 
gayest moments, there hovers near us "that 
shadow feared by man." 

The French artist Poussin has pictured for us 
a group of happy shepherds and shepherdesses 
finding even in the forests of Arcadia a dread re- 
minder that earthly joys are not forever. In a 
gay revel through the autumn woods they have 
come suddenly upon an old tomb, and as they 
scrape away the moss above the entrance their 
fingers trace out this inscription, "et in Arcadia 
ego" — I too have lived in Arcadia. Their faces 
are saddened and their songs are stilled as they 
pause in dumb reverie above the tomb, whence has 
come this salutation of the dead. 

"If a man die shall he live again?" With what 
terrible fascination this question holds us ! We 
cannot let it alone. Why not say "No" and end 
it once for all? Men have said that. And cer- 
tainly the signs are with them. What petty crea- 
tures we are. The forces of nature crush us like 
straws in an avalanche. A germ so small that the 
naked eye cannot see it enters our body, and in a 
few hours it is racked and tossed with disease. We 



IMMORTALITY 15 

feed our bodies thrice a day and sleep a third of 
our time; but in spite of it all, eyes are growing 
dim, ears dull and limbs decrepit. The strongest 
among us comes finally to that 

"Last scene of all 
That ends this strange, eventful history 
Second childishness and mere oblivion, 
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." 

Then out of "The City of Dreadful Night," 
Thompson sends his dreary cry of grim despair. 

"The world rolls round forever like a mill. 
It grinds out life and death and good and ill; 
It has no purpose, thought, nor mind, nor wilL 
While air of space and time's full river flow, 
The mill must blindly whirl unresting so, 
It may be wearing out, but who can know? 
Doth it use man harshly as he saith? 
It grinds him some slow years of bitter breath; 
Then grinds him back again into eternal death." 

Yet behold us still asking the question, "If a 
man die shall he live again?" Can we hope for a 
final, complete and full answer? 

M. Louis Elbe in a recent book has tried to 
demonstrate the Future Life with the aid of an- 
cient wisdom and modern science. But though he 
brings us the most ancient theories, the newest 
psychology, and the latest experiments of the 
Psychic Society he does nothing more than kindle 
afresh in us "the pleasing hope, the fond desire, 
the longing after immortality." We feel that this 
is a sordid way to prove our hope, and are con- 



16 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

vinced anew that there is "no demonstration out- 
side the laboratory and the mathematics room." 

Is this hope of future life then a dream? By 
no means. Man is immortal. In the higher judg- 
ments of the reason and the soul there are voices 
in plenty. 

Let four of them come before us with their "In- 
timations of Immortality." 

First of all, the voice of Humanity's Experi- 
ence. 

The instinct for immortality is universal. It is 
a beam of golden light piercing through the dark 
history of the race. The "Book of the Dead," the 
oldest literature known, abounds in the thought 
of a life beyond the grave. On the mummy cases 
of Egypt, is pictured a lotus flower opening in 
the morning sun, and a phoenix rising from the 
ashes of a dying fire. The Vedic hymns of the 
Hindus proclaim an eternal soul. "When a man 
is smitten of death, his life goeth back to the sun, 
but there remains in him that w T hich is undying 
. . . His soul goeth to the world where his deeds 
belong. It goeth to the world of the Creator if it 
have done the deeds that lead it to the world of the 
Creator." 

At the death of Socrates, his young disciple 
Crito is asking, "In what way shall we bury you ?" 
And the old philosopher replies, "In any way you 
like. But you must get good hold on me and take 
care that I do not run away from you, . . . for 
when I have drunk the poison, I shall leave you for 



IMMORTALITY 17 

the realms of the blest. I would not have you say 
at the burial, 'Thus we lay out Socrates,' nor 
'Thus we follow him to the grave.' Be of good 
cheer; say that you are burying my body only." 

And long, long before these words were spoken, 
way back in the age of ice, the archeologist has 
found that men buried the tools and trinkets of 
the dead, for their spirits to use in the land be- 
yond. 

There is no tribe so degraded nor so low that 
does not in some way possess the instinct for a fu- 
ture life. And there is no culture so high that 
does not claim this instinct as a part of its highest 
thought. The human mind seems to be built with 
this as its most necessary concept. Other ideas 
are cast off as too small for a growing universe, 
but this abides through every change. 

As we examine the lower instincts of the body, 
that are universal and persist, we discover every- 
where nature's provision for their longings. The 
cry for food and fire is answered with flames and 
bread. 

But here is an instinct for life itself — immortal 
life. An instinct that grows in power as men rise 
higher. An instinct that is linked with all human 
progress, that has nerved men for great deeds, 
that has been the signboard at every crossing on 
life's rising slopes, "Here you strike the Upward 
Trail." 

Can it be that man's most persistent, universal 
and high instinct — the one thing in his being that 



18 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

has nerved him to great endeavor ; that which has 
built his most beautiful virtues, is to be the one 
instinct in all his life that is a foolish dream? Is 
God growing less in power and reason and love 
as he rises higher? Is he the Father of our physi- 
cal life, supplying its every need ; and at the same 
time the fiendish Destroyer of our souls, the 
Mocker of our undying hopes? 

"Shall man alone, for whom all else revives, 
No resurrection know? Shall man alone, 
Imperial man ! be sown in barren ground 
Less privileged than the grain on which he feeds?" 

The second voice is the voice of Human Experi- 
ment. 

The scientist has compelled us to live in a new 
world. We used to live in a little universe. The 
earth was flat, and vaulted by an "inverted butter 
bowl" on which the stars were pinned. Jacob's 
ladder reached to the sky, and the sun was seventy- 
five miles away. 

But the astronomer came first, and with his 
telescope he opened to us a universe, awful in its 
immensity. The universe in which we live is only 
one of many thousands. Our sun, a hundred mil- 
lion miles away, is only a tallow dip amid a hun- 
dred thousand others. The world is a grain of 
sand at the bottom of a shoreless sea. What 
visions of possibility this teeming universe offers ! 
Is it possible that this brief life of seventy years 
on the narrow confines of this diminutive ball, is 



IMMORTALITY 19 

all there is for a spirit that has aspirations for and 
dreams of endless life in this vast universe of God? 
The very immensity of things is a challenge to 
immortal life. 

Following the astronomer comes the physicist 
telling us that in all this vast immensity not one 
atom of matter nor one ounce of energy can be 
destroyed. You may change their form, but you 
cannot obliterate them. What, then, shall be our 
conclusion about that most powerful force we know 
— human personality? On the scientific basis of 
conservation we know that 

"Nothing walks with aimless feet 

And not one life can be destroyed 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When God hath made the pile complete. " 

Next comes the evolutionist, to tell us the proc- 
ess by which this universe came to its present 
vastness and beauty. It has grown like a flower. 
Step by step through the ages man and the uni- 
verse in which he lives have been rising, ever rising. 
And in the upward and onward march that which 
has been found to be untrue and useless has been 
cast aside. Only the fit survives. "When that 
which is perfect is come, then that which is in part 
is done away." Only those things remain out of 
a past age which can serve succeeding generations 
in the onward march of progress. 

And behold ! Constantly growing in power and 
certitude, ever occupying a larger place in the 



20 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

lives of men, is that crowning jewel of humanity's 
thought — Immortality. As we evolve through the 
centuries from lower to higher planes of life, the 
doctrine of immortality is more and more a neces- 
sity to our thought, and the reality behind it a 
more vital element of our being. 

The size, the permanence, and the progress of 
the universe, science has unfolded, are convincing 
proof that this hope of immortality is not "the 
dream of fools." 

A third voice is the Philosophy of Life's In- 
completeness. 

We seem to enter only the beginnings of things 
here. 

Our knowledge is incomplete. We have a ca- 
pacity for intellectual power far beyond our pres- 
ent life. The wonder is not that one small head 
can carry all we know, but that in a field of knowl- 
edge so vast we can acquire so little. Mysteries 
are ever before us and we die with Goethe's last 
words on our lips, "More light, more light." 

I gather a handful of pebbles by the sea, and 
classify them in my laboratory; and I call this 
geology. But how utterly have I failed to com- 
prehend the Logos of the earth. 

I pluck a "flower from the crannied wall," and 
analyze it to the last detail. And I call this bio- 
logy. But over my boasted science of life I am 
compelled to say, "// I could understand what you 
are, little flower." 

I send my strongest telescope far out into the 



IMMORTALITY 21 

heavens, and chart the sky with a million stars, 
but I have only reached the edge of the infinite 
spans beyond. The curtain falls on mystery. 

I am standing by the cradle of a new-born child. 
"What is this new Mystery?" I ask. "A little 
bone and muscle, and chemical fluid," the physiolo- 
gist answers. "A mind wrapped up in a case of 
clay," the psychologist says. "Another producer 
and consumer," says the economist. "My child," 
says the mother. And the curtain falls on the 
mystery of life. 

Over our highest wisdom is written, "Continued 
in our next." The unfinished epistle of life's 
knowledge calls for an eternal postscript. 

Our work is incomplete. Who ever feels that he 
has accomplished all his heart desired? We are 
a race of men whose "reach exceeds our grasp." 
We are compelled to write "finis" over our toil be- 
fore it is half complete. Victor Hugo said: "For 
half a century, I have been writing my thoughts 
in prose, verse, history, philosophy, drama, ro- 
mance, tradition, satire, ode, song — I have tried 
all. But I feel that I have not said a thousandth 
part of what is in me. When I go down to the 
grave, I can say like so many others, 'I have fin- 
ished my day's work,' but I cannot say, 'I have 
finished my life.' The tomb is no blind alley. It 
is a thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to 
open in the daw T n." 

The trowel falls from nerveless fingers on an 
unfinished wall ; the needle dulls with the seam half 



22 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

sewn ; the plow rusts in the unfinished furrow. Our 
work is too vast for earth. Queen Elizabeth dies 
crying for "an inch of time" ; and our hearts echo 
her cry. 

Love and justice, too, are incomplete. 

Our lives beget some deathless loves. They are 
broken, severed. We cannot force ourselves to 
the horrid conclusion that death has severed them 
forever, when their silver cord is loosed and their 
golden bowl is broken. "I shall see her again," 
a mother said to me as we turned away from the 
grave of a beautiful child of twelve. "Yes, dear 
mother, you will see her again. Hope on." 

We believe in perfect justice. But, Oh! what 
wrongs, what inequalities here. "Right forever 
on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne." 
Goodness unrewarded. Evil unpunished. This is 
indeed a sorry scheme of things if there is no bal- 
ancing of the scales in a land beyond. What a 
tragedy is life, if for her wrongs there is "no 
balminGilead!" 

These three voices have told us much. Death 
comes on. We meet it bravely, heroically, full of 
hope. 

"Into the dark and silent night before us 
Naked we glide. 
No hand hath mapped the constellations o'er us 
No comrade at our side — 
No chart, no guide." 

Now another voice is heard — the voice of Reve- 
lation. 



IMMORTALITY 23 

Human experience, human experiment, human 
philosophy, link their messages with a fourth voice 
— the sure, unfailing voice of God. 

If we have been walking in the moonbeams of 
hope before, the Bible rises, like the sun, to shed 
over us the glare of noon day. 

"Toil on, in hope o'ercome 
The steeps God set for thee. 
For past the Alpine summits of earth's toil 
Lieth thine Italy." 

A gentle spirit moves over the hills of Palestine. 
Some men say, "A great prophet is come." Others, 
"We have seen the Messiah." One has the vision 
to say, "Thou art the Christ, the son of the Liv- 
ing God." 

And now I hear this Christ speak for himself; 
"I am come from the Father. The Father and I 
are one. He is not a God of the dead, but of the 
living. In my Father's house are many mansions. 
I go to prepare a place for you. I am the resur- 
rection and the life ; he that believeth in me though 
he were dead yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth 
and believeth on me shall never die." 

And all through that marvellous story, the one 
thought that towers high above the lofty peaks 
that surround it, is this, "In me ye shall have life — 
immortal life." 

Now it is the hour before the crucifixion. The 
Son of God is talking to His dejected disciples. 
But He is talking to them of conquest, of victory. 



24 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

"When I am risen, I will go before you into Gali- 
lee." 

Dark days follow. The gloom of twilight 
deepens into night. Discouraged and defeated, 
the disciples are hiding in Jerusalem. Their Lord 
is crucified and buried. 

"Now he is dead, far hence he lies, 
In the lorn Syrian town 
And on his grave with pitying eyes, 
The Syrian stars look down." 

Then a strange thing happens. These defeated, 
cowering, nerveless disciples, are suddenly trans- 
formed. With tremendous courage and fiery elo- 
quence they fling themselves upon the world, and 
literally "turn it upside down." Their whirlwind 
rush does not stop until they have girded the 
earth. Nineteen centuries pass, and the eleven 
have become four hundred million ! 

What was it that thus transformed this band of 
weaklings, and completely altered the course of 
human history? "A dead Jew hanging on a 
cross?" "A dream, a vision, a fraud, of which 
ignorant fishermen were the victims?" No! The 
keynote of it all was in that grand word which 
they so fearlessly hurled upon the world, "Now is 
Christ risen from the dead." 

And all through the rest of that matchless 
story, the glad refrain is "Christ is risen!" "If 
Christ be not risen, our faith is vain." "Death 
is swallowed up in victory." "This corruptible 



IMMORTALITY 25 

shall put on incorruption, this mortal shall put on 
immortality." "0, death, where is thy sting; 0, 
grave, where is thy victory?" 

Down through the centuries that song has gone, 
sounding louder as the years roll by, its divine 
assurance of life that never ends. 

"Good night," the early Christians used to say, 
as their soul took its flight. Not "farewell." This 
is the voice of every happy soul that falls asleep 
in Jesus. 

In the home of a friend of mine there was a 
little child who was the sunshine of her parents' 
life. To those who loved her she seemed almost 
an angel child. It was her father's custom to come 
to her bed each night before she fell asleep, for his 
good-night kiss. 

At length sickness came. The little body wasted 
away. The end drew near, and the sleep of death 
stole over the childish heart. But, she, thinking 
it was only the gentle drowse of her evening slum- 
ber, lifted her arms toward her father and whis- 
pered, "Good night, father. I'll see you in the 
morning." 

The child was right. "Of such is the kingdom 
of heaven." 

God help us all as we gather the cloak of death 
around us, to say, not in the poor pessimism of 
the pagan, "Vale Aeternum" — everlasting fare- 
well; but in the simple faith of a little child to 
whisper, "Good night, good night, I'll see you in 
the morning." 



Ill 

IS THERE A GOD I CAN TRUST ? 



"Atheism leaves the reason like a fluttering and 
dying bird, in an atmosphere exhausted of oxygen. It 
wraps the imagination in darkness. It blackens the 
heavens. It proclaims the human race to be father- 
less. It empties the universe of purpose. This com- 
plex web of unresting energies is a machine, not only 
without a Maker, but without an end before it or a 
mind within it. 

"What conception could be more terrifying than a 
mindless universe! We are passengers in a train 
rushing at maddest speed, but whither we cannot tell. 
There are no signals on this line, no engineer has laid 
the rails; no driver is on the footplate. Happiness, 
for us, depends on the presence of certain qualities 
in the universe — love, foresight, justice, righteous- 
ness. But these are personal qualities : and since there 
is no personal God, these things are not to be found 
in the system to which we belong. We are an orphan 
race, wandering under pitiless and empty skies." 

W. H. Fitchett, "The Beliefs of Unbelief." 



IS THERE A GOD I CAN TRUST? 

The fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God.' 9 
Psalm 14: 1. 

There is a somewhat distressing study taught 
in our theological seminaries known as Systematic 
Theology. Not that one revolts against system, 
for that word is one of the slogans of the present 
hour. Nor does one object to theology, — the 
logic of God, — for than this, there is no higher 
logic. But there is a certain coldness about those 
long drawn out discussions of subtile problems, 
that chills the very marrow of life, and wearies 
the brain with words. 

". . . . Do not all charms fly, 
At the touch of cold philosophy? 
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, 
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, 
Empty the haunted air, the gnomed mine — 
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made 
The tender personed Lamia melt into a shade. 

And one of the most unsatisfactory things about 
this study, is its attempt to give us reasoned proof 
for the existence of God. There is presented to us 
a long series of arguments designed to "prove 5 * 
the existence of Deity. When you have waded 
through it all, you are convinced anew of the fail- 
ure of mere dialectics to satisfy the longing for the 
Infinite. 

There lingers the memory of a few long 

29 



30 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

words, "ontological," "cosmological," "teleologi- 
cal." We have a vague impression that in some 
way we have demonstrated the existence of God. 
We remember what this Nicene father and that 
said about it. We have a feeling that Hegel didn't 
quite grasp reality, when he said God was the 
"Idea" behind all. We cannot say with Schopen- 
hauer, that the Power behind all is "Blind Will," 
nor with Mill, that it is "the Uncaused Cause." 
It is not Spencer's "Unascertained Something," 
nor Haeckel's "Blind Law." It means little to 
have Matthew Arnold tell us, "God is a Power in 
us making for righteousness." 

We feel that we, with these, have been striving 
with a problem that is far beyond the realm of 
demonstration; that we, with them, are believers 
in God, but that it is not the reasoned proof of 
theology that makes us such. Whatever name we 
give to the Infinite and Eternal, there is not one 
who does not believe that these exist. The philoso- 
phy of atheism is the philosophy of the fool. 
There is a God ! Man cannot demonstrate, nor 
prove it by the method of the laboratory. But 
we know it. 

We are ready to believe that if God is perfect, 
He must exist, for existence is a part of perfec- 
tion. We know that every effect must have an ad- 
equate cause ; and if the universe is an effect, then 
the Cause of it must be well nigh Infinite. We be- 
lieve that order is the product of mind alone. And 
here is a universe, wonderful in its order and adap- 



A GOD I CAN TRUST 31 

tations. We conclude that this Infinite must be 
also a Designer. 

But have we proven the existence of God? Not 
a bit of it. We have established the reasonable- 
ness of His existence, and have forced the burden 
of proof back on the Atheist, with his tremendous 
negation, "there is no God." Men might still say 
this Being, Cause, Designer, existed, and declare 
still, that It is impersonal, and the Evidences, the 
workings of accident or of material evolution. A 
tremendous task would be before the man who 
sought to establish such a position, and his logic 
would have to deny the very foundations of knowl- 
edge itself, and contradict the experience of uni- 
versal humanity. But in the realm of pure philos- 
ophy it might be done. We shall have to deter- 
mine the character of the existing Infinite by other 
processes, than the dialectics of the reason. 

What better can we do than to turn to ourselves. 
The heart and the soul of man has a logic all its 
own. 

The theologian and the philosopher have led 
us thus far along the journey: They have shown 
us that this dream of an Infinite, Personal God is 
not necessarily a lie, contrary to reason. Indeed 
they have shown us that it is in accord with the 
highest reason. 

What then do our hearts say? 

Well, first of all we discover, that their deepest 
longing is for a personal God. 



32 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

"O, give me a God with an eye to see, 
A mind that my mind can know, 
A love to meet my deepest love, 
And a heart to comfort my woe." 

The first instinct of the savage is prayer; the 
latest longing of the learned is prayer. We could 
not pray to chance, to cosmic force, nor to blind 
law. Only the personal can communicate with the 
personal. If God be not a person, than the in- 
stinct of prayer is a lie; and there is presented 
the paradox of man's holiest emotion born of de- 
ceit, and his highest instinct, a lie. The saints are 
all deceived, and the testimony of rogues is true. 
The innate longings of the heart, will not let us 
get away from the thought that God must be a 
Person. If He is not, then he is not the kind of a 
God the heart of man, in the deepest longings of 
his highest moments, craves. He is not God. 

And again, there is the fact of ourselves. Here 
we are. What a wonderful life, modern psychol- 
ogy has revealed ours to be. Grand are our 
thoughts. Is it possible that the Power who gave 
them does not think? We feel, we have emotions. 
Great loves, great compassion, great sympathy, 
are born of these associations of ours. Is it pos- 
sible that the Power that put them in us does not 
Itself possess them? Can a Creator give that which 
he himself does not possess? And there is con- 
science, too; and back of it the sense of absolute 
Right and Justice and Truth. Whence came 
these? Is it possible that they have been born of 
blind law? 



A GOD I CAN TRUST 33 

Then, too, we are conscious of our own being. 
We are spirits, grandly free. Personality is the 
great ultimate of our consciousness. Is God less 
than His creature? Is He lower in the scale of His 
existence? Does the infinitesimal contain that 
which cannot be found in the Infinite ? The para- 
dox is absurd. We are driven irresistibly to the 
conclusion that the Power which is responsible for 
a personality, cannot be of lower order than the 
creature of its hands. 

"But," says one, "that is making God in the 
image of man. A dog as he bays the moon, might 
with as much reason project a dog Deity on the 
skies, and say "behold your God. 55 Is this true? 
Not at all. If God is God at all then we must 
place Him in the highest category of being we 
know. If the dog could reason, he must conclude 
that his master is a superior creature. And if 
he were to project a God on the heavens, it would 
be a man — the highest being of which he is aware. 
The highest category of being man knows, is that 
of Free Personality. A god who is any less is no 
God. It is Sir Oliver Lodge who says, "There 
are many errors, but there is one truth in anthro- 
pomorphism. Whatever worthy attribute belongs 
to man, be it personality or any other, its exist- 
ence in the universe is thereby admitted; we can 
deny it no more. 55 The unwritten logic of the life 
of men draws irresistibly to a Personal God. Men 
may call Him by many names, Zeus, Jupiter or 
Jehovah, but it is the same God behind all — an 



34 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Immanent yet Transcendent Person, in whom the 
universe lives and moves and has its being. 

"A fire-mist and a planet, 

A crystal and a cell, 
A jelly fish and a saurian, 

And the caves where the cave men dwell; 
Then a sense of law and beauty, 

And a face turned from the clod, 
Some call it Evolution, 

And others call it God. 

A haze on the far horizon, 

An Infinite tender sky, 
The rich, ripe fruits of the cornfield, 

And the wild geese sailing high; 
And over the upland and lowland 

The charm of the golden-rod, 
Some of us call it Autumn, 

And others call it God. 

Like tides on the crescent sea beach 

When the moon is new and thin, 
Into our hearts, high yearnings 

Come welling and surging in, 
Come from the mystic ocean, 

Whose rim no foot has trod; 
Some of us call it Longing, 

And others call it God. 

A picket frozen on duty, 

A mother starved for her brood, 
Socrates drinking the hemlock, 

And Jesus on the rood; 
And the millions who, humble and nameless, 

The straight, hard pathway trod, 
Some call it Consecration, 

And others call it God." 



A GOD I CAN TRUST 35 

Will this God reveal Himself to His creatures? 
Or must we like the Athenians erect our altars to 
"The Unknown God." One of the great qualities 
of personality is self -revelation. Shall Infinite, 
Perfect Personality not reveal Himself? The Book 
of Nature, the Book of Life and the Book of 
Books, all have their answer. It is the same. No 
man can read them long and seriously without dis- 
covering that lesson that they teach on every page : 
"God is a Father and we are His children." The 
ultimate qualities that make the Infinite God are 
perfect love, perfect goodness, perfect holiness 
perfect justice. And these are the qualities of 
Fatherhood. Out of the deepest experiences of 
human sorrow, and out of the highest ecstasies of 
human joy, our hearts are always calling "Abba, 
Father." 

There is no higher vision of God. "Judge," 
"Creator," "Preserver," "King," grand words are 
they ! But best of all, "Our Father !" 

This is no fantastic dream — this thought of 
Fatherhood. Nothing else will satisfy the soul. 
We cannot force ourselves to believe that we are 
a race of orphans. Far within the deepest recesses 
of the soul, a still, small voice is whispering, "A 
Father to the fatherless is God, in His holy habi- 
tation." 

"The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no 
God.' " The word means "empty, faded, withered." 
Such is the life of him who says "There is no God." 



36 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

A fading flower, whose beauty withers, whose fra- 
grance dies. 

And still there are those who say, "I will not 
believe except I see. Prove God to me. Give me 
a written guarantee, that all you say is true. 
Demonstrate it all to me." 

Like sailors on a torn and tattered raft they 
sail the sea of life. All hope is gone. And now 
in the distance a ship is seen. Their signals of 
distress bring her alongside. "Shall I throw you 
a rope," the captain calls. "Wait a moment," is 
the reply; "can you prove that you will bring us 
to the harbor; is your ship a staunch craft; are 
there any combustibles in your cargo; is your 
skipper drunk?" All these are answered, and still 
the shipwrecked sailors are not satisfied. Then 
they are allowed to come on board. They examine 
her from stem to stern, from mizzen mast to keel. 
They come back to the captain. "Captain, this 
ship looks seaworthy, we would like to take pas- 
sage with you, but unless you will give us a written 
guarantee to bring us to the harbor we will go 
back to our raft." And back they go. Such is 
the position of the man who demands that we 
"prove" the Fatherhood of God. 

Happy is the soul that "believes where it can- 
not prove," and walks the path of life, now in sor- 
rows, now in joys, "enduring as seeing Him who 
is invisible." 



A GOD I CAN TRUST 37 

ri 'In pastures green/ not always — sometimes He 
Who knoweth best, in kindness leadeth me 
In heavy ways where weary shadows be. 
Out of the sunshine, warm, and soft and bright, 
Out of the sunshine into darkest night — 
I oft would faint with sorrow and affright 

Only for this; I know He holds my hand, 
So whether in the green or desert land, 
I trust, e'en though I may not understand. 

'And by still waters;' no not always so. 
Ofttimes the heavy tempests round me blow, 
And o'er my soul the waves and billows go; 
And when the storm beats loudest and I cry 
Aloud for help, the Father standeth by 
And whispers to my soul, 'Lo, it is I.' 

And more than this, where'er my pathway lead, 
He gives to me no helpless, broken reed, 
But His own hand, sufficient for my need. 
So where'er He leads me I can safely go, 
And in the blest hereafter I shall know 
Why in His wisdom, He hath led me so." 

We are living in a day of daring deeds, and 
stupendous dreams. The watchword of the hour 
is expansion. The universe has expanded. When 
a boy I gazed up into the blue of heaven, and saw 
it stretching like "an inverted bowl" to the horizon. 
I was glad to think that I lived under the apex of 
the sky, and did not have to stoop, like those poor 
fellows living close under the horizon! I know 
better now. The house of my Father is larger 
than I had ever dreamed. Billions of miles will 
not measure its vastness. 



38 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Knowledge is expanding. The books on me- 
chanics and science have to be remade every year 
or so. The study of psychology was all but un- 
known fifty years ago. It is a commonplace with 
every schoolboy now. 

Our pleasures are expanding. The world has 
been turned upside down for things that shall de- 
light and thrill us. "A pitful of Kings," for 
which the French king sighed, to amuse him, would 
be all too tame for us today. We must have six- 
cylinder automobiles and flying machines. 

Our achievements are expanding. Man, "im- 
perial man," is harnessing the forces of earth and 
air, and launching into achievements so startling 
that he himself is bewildered. 

Our religion is expanding. We are rising to 
loftier heights, and the horizon is broadening. We 
can almost pierce today, through the mist-veiled 
harbor, into the eternal city. Old creeds are cast 
aside, and new ones are born in a day. The heretic 
of today is the bigot of tomorrow. 

Where in all this changing, expanding, un- 
stable age, can that be found which does not 
change? On what can the troubled heart lean for 
support when the props are falling one by one? 
Where is there anchorage when the tidal wave has 
buried the harbor? 

There is but one place. In the Bosom of the 
Father. " 'I will receive you, and be a Father unto 
you and ye shall be my sons and daughters/ saith 
the Lord Almighty." 



A GOD I CAN TRUST 39 

Here is the Rock of Ages — the Infinite, Eternal 
Father of our spirits, in whom we live and move 
and have our being, "the same yesterday, today, 
and forever." 

"God will not change; the restless years may bring 
Sunlight and shade — the glories of the spring; 
And silent gloom of sunless winter hours ; 
Joy mixed with grief — sharp thorns and fragrant 

flowers. 
Earth's lights may shine a while and then grow dim ; 
But God is true, there is no change in Him. 

Trust in thy Lord today and all thy days ; 
Let His unerring hand direct thy ways 
Through the uncertainties, and hopes and fears 
That greet thee through the changing years; 
And find, while all life's fleeting scenes pass by, 
Thy Refuge in a Love that cannot die." 



IV 
WHY DO WE SUFFER ? 



"The mystery of the storm wind is the riddle of 
the universe. The origin of evil is the night whose 
blackness refuses to lift. If I could understand the 
storm wind, I could fathom God. If I could fathom 
God, if I could drop a plummet and strike bottom 
in the divine nature and say: 'I have measured the 
Almighty, I know his height and depth and length 
and breadth/ that instant I should lose God. God 
must ever be beyond us, dwelling in a mystery that 
can be entered only by a blindfolded soul willing to 
trust where it cannot trace, to believe where it can- 
not see. 

Yet we need not be lost in the labyrinth of mys- 
tery. Faith in the midst of the storm is not to be 
confounded with credulity in the fog. There are 
landmarks which do not disappear even when the 
storm wind blows. We cannot understand the origin 
of evil nor the mystery of suffering, but there are 
certain great facts we can lay hold of, and by means 
thereof keep hope alive even when the tempest is at 
its worst." 

James I. Vance, "The Eternal in Man." 



"To reject Christ as some humanitarians do, on 
the ground that evil is incompatible with a belief in 
God as love, is surely a most illogical and misguided 
course. By so doing you do not in the least mitigate 
the evil, and you dismiss the one power which can 
overcome it. The more intensely we feel the sorrow 
and sin of the world the more earnestly and consist- 
ently will we avail ourselves of the one remedy. The 
more painfully we recognize the darkness, the more 
diligently we shall abide in the traversing ray of 
light." 

Robert F. Horton, "My Belief." 



WHY DO WE SUFFER? 

So I fed the flock of slaughter, verily the poor of 
the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I 
called Beauty, and the other I called Bands; and I 
fed the flock. Zecheriah 11:7. 

There are many synonyms for sorrow. "Pres- 
ent tribulations" are as varied and as limitless as 
the leaves in Vallambrosa. Adam is driven from 
the Paradise of God ; the Hebrew is making straw- 
less bricks on the banks of the reeking Nile; the 
Greek is buried in the silver mines of Crete; the 
Roman is an exile in barbarian Gaul; the Russian 
perishes in Siberia's snows ; the Indian crawls 
weary miles across the plains of India to reach the 
sacred Ganges ; the leper cries "unclean, unclean" ; 
the son of Israel weeps by the river of Babylon 
when he remembers Zion. 

Yes, the world is full of sorrows. The great 
mystery that confronts us all is the mystery of 
suffering. 

In the face of a world that "groans and travails 
in its pain," what shall the heart of man believe? 
When, out of the depths he lifts his face and cries, 
"O, God, why my pain?" what answer has heaven 
to offer? Is the difficulty insoluble, the mystery 
impenetrable? Apparently so. For after ages 
of experience, the race is still facing it. 

Shall we then conclude with Heine, that life is 
"an age-long riddle only fools expect to solve;" 
and that in this wild remorseless battlefield of life 

43 



44 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

we are doomed never to know the meaning of our 
tears ? 

Three answers have come to us from the philos- 
ophy of men. 

One is the answer of Infidelity. The infidel has 
an easy task. He simply gathers together the 
vast accumulation of human woes, and says to 
men : "Is this then a world framed by a good and 
beneficent Being? Why, the lowest of men would 
not inflict on a dog, the tortures that God inflicts 
on men. If he exists at all, he is either a fiend 
or a fool, who has created forces to torture men, 
which he cannot or will not control. Nature's 
fires burn man, her snows chill him, her acids burn 
him, her steam scalds him, her famines starve him, 
her forces destroy him, and the revolving earth is 
like a wheel to which he is bound, whose revolutions 
tear limb from limb." This is the philosophy of 
Pessimism — of Infidelity. This world is the worst 
possible world. There is no Eye to see our suf- 
ferings, there is no Ear to hear our cry, no Heart 
to pity and no Arm to save. 

". . . . All is black. 
In heaven no single star, on earth no track; 
A brooding hush, without a stir or note, 
The air so thick it clots within the throat. 

And we stride on, austere, 

No hope can have no fear." 

A second solution is the answer of the Sentimen- 
tal Idealist. This is the best possible world. There 
is no such thing as pain. Our senses deceive us. 



WHY DO WE SUFFER 45 

Have consumption or the fever worn and racked 
our bodies? It is a "delusion of mortal mind." 
To the business man standing beside the ashes of 
his fortune its voice is, "This heap of ruins is not 
real, you are suffering from 'deluded imagina- 
tion. 5 n To the shivering wage slave of the tene- 
ment it says, "This hovel is a palace. 'Be thou 
warmed and fed !' " To Byron and Mrs. Brown- 
ing, and the thousands who suffer constant pain; 
to the martyrs who die for truth ; to the blind, the 
lepers and the outcasts, it says: "Your life is a 
delusion. You do not suffer. Close your eyes, 
bury your head in the sand like the ostrich ; 'think 
beautiful thoughts;' put on 'immortal mind,' and 
you will be done with trouble. Let 'Divine Science' 
show you that suffering is not real, and that pain 
is a delusion." 

There is a third way of looking at life and its 
troubles, that is not the philosophy of gloomy 
Nescience, nor yet of sickly "Divine Science." It 
is the philosophy of "Divine Sense." 

It fully believes that this is a good world. It 
recognizes that there are pain and sorrow here, 
but the good far outweighs the evil. Pain is the 
only drawback in a life that is full of pleasure. 
The vast majority of human beings are not at any 
given time in pain. A man laughs a thousand 
times where he cries once. The organs of his 
body and the laws of nature contribute a thou- 
sand-fold more to his pleasure than to his pain. 
Even his troubles themselves, he finds often to be 



46 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Angels of Joy. This is not the best possible 
world, nor yet the worst. It is a good world. 

There is hope in this philosophy. Fools say 
there is no good. Weak men say there is no evil. 
The strong and the wise declare: "There is great 
good here, and much of evil, and I am determined 
by God's help to turn the troubles of life into 
blessings." 

Let us rid ourselves once for all of the idea that 
our sorrows are the curse of a vindictive God. Our 
pains are not of His creation, and our calamaties 
are not the stroke of an avenging hand. When 
San Francisco lay in ruins, I heard men say, "This 
is the judgment of God on a wicked city. 55 Did 
they forget that the temples of God Himself fell 
in a common ruin with the dens of iniquity? I 
heard the same words, when a beautiful child whose 
father was not a Christian, passed into another 
room in her Heavenly Father's house. What a 
slander this has been upon God! It makes Him 
not a Father but a Fiend. God punishes sin, but 
life's sorrows are not the arbitrary smitings of a 
vindictive arm. God is not the author of evil, but 
He is the author of evil's consequences. 

We must realize, too, that many of our sorrows 
find their source in ourselves. Our sicknesses are 
born in some violation of the beneficent laws of 
health. Our environment, which we blame so 
largely for the woes of life, is man's creation and 
our own choosing. Our inherited tendencies, "the 
shackles of the past," are chains our fathers have 



WHY DO WE SUFFER 47 

forged upon us — chains which we are forging upon 
generations to follow. As a nation we are suf- 
fering from the curse of the vicious negro, and yet 
I have heard men cast the blame for that back on 
God! 

What then is God's relation to earth's suffer- 
ings? If we believe in God at all we believe that 
He is the Creator of the cosmic order. The laws 
of nature and of spirit, we are accustomed to say, 
are an expression of the goodness of God. Who 
would want to live in universal anarchy, when he 
might have Law behind him? Who would want 
to live under laws that had no penalty ? The pur- 
pose of law's penalties is not vindication ; it is pro- 
tection. Wherefore there is pain to tell us that 
the fire burns. 

And God has made us grandly free. He might 
have made us puppets and worked us with a string. 
But there would have been no manhood in that, 
no dignity and honor. God permits our sorrows, 
and permits us to choose the path that leads to 
them, because we are men. He does not coerce 
with stern decree and adamant will. He shows the 
path of happiness, and bids us choose. "The pos- 
sibility of evil is the price God paid for human 
Freedom." 

Zecheriah pictures Him as a loving shepherd, 
caring for his flock. In his hand is the staff of 
Beauty, the slender crook of comfort. God has 
made all things beautiful, and w r ith life's beautiful 
things, he "feeds the flock." But he bears also 
the staff of Band, and with this he feeds the flock. 



48 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

The other day I went out into the garden to 
plant some autumn bulbs; some the simple little 
flowers of nature, others the highly cultivated 
plants of the hot house. At the heart of each, was 
the tiny germ of the springtime blossom. But over 
each are the whorls that enclose it. And as they 
rise higher, I discover that the whorls are wrapped 
the tighter. As beauty grows, the bands increase. 
The more complex the blossom, the tighter is it 
wrapped, the harder struggle does it have to open 
in the sunlight. Its beauty and its bands both be- 
long to the realm of its highest life. And God 
who folds the flowers in their encircling bands, 
stoops to reason with us and make clear the mean- 
ing of our tears. He shows us the tie that links 
the folding whorls of autumn's bulb w r ith the 
blooming hyacinth of spring. As no poet could, 
he reveals "the sweet uses of adversity," and with 
sorrow, pain and trouble, he links achievement, 
happiness, perfection. 

Out of our sorrows there is developed the Up- 
ward Look. We are reminded that we are strang- 
ers and pilgrims here, the citizens of an eternal 
city. Sometimes we forget, in our earthly cling- 
ing, our higher citizenship. Sorrow comes. Out 
of it new life is born. 

Such is the parable of the eagle's nest. "As the 
eagle stirreth up her nest, and fluttereth over her 
young, and spreadeth abroad her wings, and 
beareth them on her wings." 

In a rocky cliff an eagle has built her nest. The 



WHY DO WE SUFFER 49 

time has come for the eaglets to fly, but they will 
not. Their downy nest is so soft! The mother's 
shrill calls are all in vain. At last the nest itself 
is loosed from the ledge and the young birds must 
either fly or fall. Then it is that the mother bird 
darts beneath their tired wings, bearing them on 
her strong pinions, till they have strength to fly 
again. 

Thus are we. Wealth and fortune have builded 
us a downy nest. God sounds His call to higher 
things. But the nest is so soft and cosy! And 
w T e do not hear His call. Then the nest itself falls, 
and we are compelled to soar away from "earth's 
sordid toys to reach immortal joys." When the 
world has lost some of its charm, we begin to sing 

"Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings. Thy better 
portion trace. 
Rise from transitory things, toward heaven, thy na- 
tive place. " 

Out of our sorrows is developed also the Up- 
ward Reach. Through sorrow we test the prom- 
ises of God. The Bible is a Book of Promises. 
Sorrow forces us to prove them real. "We cry 
unto the Lord in our trouble and He bringeth us 
out of our distresses." 

You sit in a railway train, and at the further 
end of the car is the glass case, containing axe and 
sledge and saw. You read, "In case of accident 
break the glass." But you never know the worth 
of yonder tools until, a prisoner beneath the 



50 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

wreck, you hear the stroke of axe and the hum 
of saw above you. We never know what it is to 
lean on God and to trust Him, till adversity has 
called us to test His promises. We never know 
the fullness of the Shepherd's care until, in the far 
thicket on the mountain side we hear his rescuing 
footsteps and feel his protecting arms. When the 
storm breaks, we seek the shelter; in the noonday's 
weariness "the shadow of the great rock." 

Out of our sorrow there is developed also the 
Upward Life. 

Adversity is the stimulus of character, the 
builder of manhood, the maker of heroes. "Night 
brings out the stars." 

"Affliction is the good man's shining scene, 
Prosperity conceals his brightest ray. 
As night to stars ; woe lustre gives to man." 

"The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church." 
Aye, it is the seed of everything that is highest and 
best. If you were to ask me where I thought lib- 
erty was forever safe, I would take you to America 
or to Switzerland, where liberty has cost men dear. 
If you were to ask where patriotism rises to its 
highest, I would name Holland. Here a people has 
lived for centuries with the sea crowding them on 
one side, and the armies of the oppressor on the 
other. Every inch of country has cost her dear. 
For generations she has stood literally "between 
the devil and the deep sea." If you would have 
me name the greatest artist, he of grandest themes 



WHY DO WE SUFFER 51 

and noblest touch, I would name Michael Angelo, 
persecuted and oppressed. 

And if you would have me show you the sweetest 
and gentlest characters of history, behold the 
dying Socrates; Saul of Tarsus, "now become 
Paul;" Dante, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 
the two sufferers of Florence; David Livingstone, 
and Abraham Lincoln. And better still "the Man 
of Sorrows" himself, "made perfect through suf- 
fering." 

The highest beauty is beauty of character, and 
the chiselling of pain completes it. There is no 
chance in our affliction, nor any stern decree. 
Grapes are sometimes crushed that the wine of 
life may flow. Ore is cast in the refiner's pot that 
the silver may gleam. The promise to man as he 
turned his back on Eden was, "Thou shalt crush 
the serpent's head, but he shall bruise thy heel." 
Victory! But "victory, through bruising." 

One tells us of a fabled island, "whose shores 
are washed by silver and turquoise seas, whose air 
is filled with the fragrance of blooming flowers, and 
with the music of the winds and song birds ; but 
the island is uninhabited. It has no harbor. High 
sand cliffs or dangerous rocks girt it round and 
make impossible the landing of a vessel. One day 
a great tidal wave rolls in from the outer sea, and 
a mighty earthquake shakes the island from centre 
to circumference. The cliffs of sand crumble and 
a great gash is cut in the island's side, into which 
the waters rush and form a bay that calls to the 



52 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

open sea. Then great ships come and anchor there. 
A populous city rises. The storm has given the 
island a harbor. The name of the island is 'Heart' 
and the name of the storm is 'Sorrow.' " 

Thus doth sorrow prepare the heart for larger 
and more glorious life. 

"Blest be the sorrow, kind the storm 
That drives us one day nearer home." 

Why then should any child of God give way 
before the sorrows of life? There is offered him 
not the grim despair of pessimism nor yet the 
sickly sentiment of a blind optimism, but the sane, 
sober, cheering hopes of the Religion of Jesus. 
Catching the spirit of suffering and persecuted 
Paul, he may cry, "We glory in tribulations, know- 
ing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience 
Godliness, and Godliness hope — a hope that 
needeth not to be ashamed, because the love of 
God is shed abroad in our hearts." This is the 
manly, heroic way to look at suffering. It is the 
attitude of life that prepares one for the company 
of martyrs, apostles, patriots, heroes; yea even 
for the "Crown of Manhood," Jesus Christ. 

There is an old poem of Theocritus I like. A 
traveller wandering on a desolate coast comes upon 
a grave in the sand with a slab above on which is 
written : 

"A shipwrecked sailor buried on this coast 
Bids you set sail. 
Many a gallant ship the day that we were lost 
Weathered the gale." 



WHY DO WE SUFFER 53 

Yes, but how are we going to "weather the 
gale," unless we rise grandly to meet its surging 
tide? 

"Tossed on the sea of troubles, 
Soul, my soul, 
Thyself do thou control, 
And to the weapons of advancing foes 
A stubborn breast oppose; 
Undaunted by the hostile might 
Of squadrons, burning for the fight. 

Thine be no boasting when the victor's crown 
Wins thee deserved renown; 
Thine no dejected sorrow when defeat 
Would urge a base retreat. 
Rejoice in joyous things, nor overmuch 
Let grief thy bosom touch 
'Midst evil, and still bear in mind 
How changeful are the ways of humankind." 
Archilochus, "To His Soul." 



WHAT SHALL I THINK ABOUT THE 
BIBLE? 



"God has revealed Himself (to man) especially in 
His redemptive energy. We see most of God and of 
all that is essential to His character and purposes 
in His approaches to man and education of man in 
order to restore him to Himself, and to free him 
absolutely from all evil. In the Bible we have the 
written history of this approach to man, the record 
of His revelation of His gracious and saving pur- 
poses and work. To think of it as a convenient col- 
lection or summary of doctrines, a text book in theo- 
logical knowledge, is entirely to misconceive it. . . . 
God has revealed Himself, and the leading facts of 
this revelation are recorded for us in the Bible, and 
from these facts we can gather what God wishes us 
to know about Him, and as He wishes us to think of 
Him. But the Bible must not be thought of as, 'a 
collection of truths formulated in propositions, 
which God from time to time whispered in the ear, 
to be communicated to the world as the unchanging 
formulas of thought and life for all time.' ,J 

Marcus Dods, "The Bible, Its Origin and Nature/' 

Last eve I paused beside a blacksmith's door 

And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime; 
Then looking in, I saw upon the floor 

Old hammers worn with beating years of time. 

'How many anvils have you had/ said I, 
'To wear and batter all these hammers so?' 

'Just one/ said he; and then, with twinkling eye, 
'The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.' 

And so, thought I, the anvil of God's word 
For ages sceptic blows have beat upon ; 

Yet, though the noise of falling blows was heard, 
The anvil is unharmed — the hammers gone." 



WHAT SHALL I THINK ABOUT THE 
BIBLE? 

In the recent dramatization of the "Prince of 
India," there is one scene where the Wandering 
Jew stands before a table on which lie some rolls 
of parchment. One by one he takes them up: 
"The Brahmanas of the Indian," "The Maxims of 
Confucius," "The Ethics of Aristotle," "The 
Scriptures of Buddah," "The Torah of the Jews," 
and "The Bible of the Christian." The impression 
conveyed to the hearer is that there is little to 
choose among all these sacred writings; that the 
Bible of the Christian is simply one among the 
sacred books. 

This scene is expressive of a feeling that is prev- 
alent that the Bible is no better than any other 
book; that the Christian is mistaken when he ac- 
cepts it as "an authoritative rule of faith and 
practice," that there are hundreds of other sacred 
books whose precepts are just as binding and 
whose teachings are just as high as those of the 
Bible itself. To correct this impression one has 
only to wade through those dreary volumes which 
Max Muller has translated for us in "The Sacred 
Scriptures of The East" — books which can now be 
found on the shelves of almost any public library. 
There are some good things discoverable in them, 
it is true, but in the main they are worthless and 
deserve to be studied as the translator himself says, 

57 



58 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

"as a physician studies the ravings of a madman 
or the twaddle of an idiot," 

Meanwhile the pages of the Bible are being 
pored over as never before. Robert Ingersoll said 
twenty-five years ago, "In ten years the Bible will 
not be read." In 1909 ten million copies were 
printed in the English language, and it had been 
printed in over four hundred tongues. More 
copies of it were sold than any hundred other 
books combined. As the years come and go it 
plays an ever-increasing part in the history of the 
race. 

What shall we think about this Book? There 
are still many who think with Voltaire that the 
Bible is an "exploded book." There are others, 
good Christians, who are disturbed as they see 
the old conceptions vanishing and new ones taking 
their place. They are afraid for what the higher 
critics have done; they imagine that the founda- 
tions have all been swept away, and that the Bible 

"Precious book divine, 
By inspiration given/ ' 

is no longer a book to be believed, and trusted as 
the word of God. 

Both these attitudes are born of misconceptions 
as to this book. These misconceptions are four in 
number. A misconception as to what the Bible is ; 
a misconception as to how we got it ; a misconcep- 
tion as to why we believe it ; a misconception as to 
what belief in it involves. To answer these mis- 



THE BIBLE 59 

conceptions is to solve the problem of the Bible. 
There is no better method than reverently to ap- 
proach the book itself. 

Opening its pages with no preconceived theories, 
unfettered by any creed or dogma, let us ask our- 
selves four questions that we may set over against 
the four misconceptions enumerated. 

Here is this Bible of ours : "What is it?", "How 
did we get it?", "Why do we believe it?", "What 
of it?" 

1. What is it? 

We call it a Book. Indeed that is the taunt that 
Prince Muhammed flung at the Christians when he 
called them "the people of the book." But the first 
thing that we discover is that this is not one book 
but many. The name Bible is itself plural, and 
means "the books." As we examine these books, 
sixty-six in all, we discover that they cover a wide 
range of human history. They begin way back in 
the mists of prehistoric days, and end somewhere 
near the dawn of the second century A. D. Their 
authors were a varied set of men, extending all the 
way from kings on their thrones down to ignorant 
Galilean fishermen. The subjects they treat are 
as varied as the leaves of the forest. The forms in 
which they write include almost every known kind 
of literature — poetry, drama, history, epistle, 
laws, oratory, traditions, biography and a dozen 
others. Here they are, all bound together — the 
Bible. 

As we read it we discover, first of all, that it is 



60 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

not a book of science. The men who wrote it were 
ignorant of science. Physiology, geology, astron- 
omy, biology, psychology, were all unknown to 
them. They lived in a very narrow world. They 
believed the earth to be flat, and the heavens above 
it an inverted bowl, which rested at the horizon on 
foundations. The stars were balls of light fastened 
to this inverted bowl, and the sun and moon, larger 
balls that were hung down from its dome. When 
it rained, they said that God who lived way up at 
the top of this bowl, had opened windows in it to 
let water pass through. Down underneath the flat 
earth was a vast pit where the rivers and oceans 
found their source and where the spirits of the de- 
parted dwelt. 

They thought that God had made the earth in 
six days of twenty-four hours : that woman was 
made out of the rib of a man. They thought that 
the heart was the seat of the intellect, and the 
kidneys the organs of affection. They were utterly 
ignorant of science. They did not aim nor claim 
to teach it. We must rid ourselves once for all of 
the idea that the Bible teaches correct science. It 
nowhere claims to be a scientific book. 

Nor is it a book of history. It contains his- 
tory. But the teaching of history is evidently not 
its primary aim. If it were, it would not pass 
over so lightly whole centuries of the most absorb- 
ing periods of human life. A great many are per- 
plexed because of historical errors in the Bible. 
There are a few. Macauley is considered the best 



THE BIBLE 61 

English historian, and his avowed purpose is the 
writing of history. But only recently an English 
writer has shown us one hundred and twenty-seven 
mistakes in his great work. Not nearly that many 
have been shown in the Bible. If Matthew tells us 
that Pharisees asked Jesus, "Is it lawful to heal 
on the Sabbath day?" and Luke tells us that it 
was Jesus himself that asked the question, evi- 
dently one or the other made a mistake. Only a 
trifler will concern himself with such a trivial thing 
as this. 

The Bible is not a book of morals. It teaches 
the highest morality. But that is not its end and 
aim. There is considerable moral teaching in the 
old Testament that is utterly wrong. It is the 
morality of a race struggling in the darkness after 
virtues that were far beyond them. Jesus himself 
set aside a great deal of the moral teaching of the 
Old Testament. How frequently he said, "Ye have 
heard it is written, — but I say unto you." We 
shall fail utterly if we contend for the entire Bible 
as a teacher of morals. 

Then we must remember that a great deal that 
we have been accustomed to call "God's Word," 
in the Bible is really not a part of the Bible at all. 
The dates that occur in the margin of our King 
James version, were put there by an English 
scholar, Usher by name, who demonstrated to his 
own satisfaction that the world was created four 
thousand years before Christ. He was mistaken, 
but somehow people got to thinking that his reck- 
oning was the word of God. 



62 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

The titles that appear at the head of the books 
of the Bible were never on the original copies. 
The manuscripts of the authors were lost long 
before the Bible was gotten together. The earliest 
one we have is from the fourth century after 
Christ. We read at the head of the epistle to the 
Hebrews, "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the 
Hebrews. " As a matter of fact there is serious 
reason for believing that Paul never wrote this 
epistle. The heading was put there by some monk 
of the early centuries, who had never given the 
question a moment's historic study. 

At the head of the chapters of the Bible appear 
brief sketches that aim to interpret the text that 
follows. These are not parts of the Bible itself. 
They are traditional interpretations, many of 
them the work of mystics of the second and third 
centuries, who believed every letter of the books 
to have some hidden meaning. The result is that 
the "Song of Solomon," which is nothing more 
than a dramatic poem to teach the uplifting power 
of pure love, is made to contain hundreds of allu- 
sions to Christ's relationship with his church. 
These are not and never were a part of the true 
Bible. 

We must remember, too, that the Bible is full 
of poetry. And wherever there is poetry, there 
is bound to be figurative language. A great many 
things our grandfathers thought was history, is 
found on closer study to be the figurative language 
of the poet. Many of the hard things that used to 



THi: BIBLE 68 

drive thinking men into skepticism, are discovered 
after all to be only beautiful poetry. No wonder 
men staggered away from faith when they were 
threatened with death as Galileo was, because he 
declared that the earth moved and the sun stood 
still, in direct contradiction to the word of Joshua, 
where he bids the sun cease from moving in the 
heavens ! We have learned the difference now be- 
tween poetry and history. 

What then is this Bible? Briefly this: The 
Bible is a religious book given us by God wherein 
He reveals Himself in a unique way, in connection 
with our salvation from sin through Jesus Christ. 
The Bible's purpose is to teach men the way of 
salvation. It is the Christ in it that makes it 
unique. Toward him, all before his birth is pro- 
gressing, and back to him goes all that follows. 
The Bible is a religious book — religious only. It 
concerns itself with one problem only — getting the 
heart of man at one with God. If it teaches theo- 
logy or history or morality, it is only to prepare 
men for the fullness of time when the world's Mes- 
siah should come to show them the way of life, 
and himself become the instrument of atonement, 
making man at one with God. 

It cannot be too often repeated. The Bible is a 
religious book, and religious only. That which 
marks it from all other books, is that it contains 
a Revelation of God as a Saviour of Manhood 
from its sins, through a divine Redeemer, Jesus 
Christ. The Bible is the word of God. The 



64 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Father revealed Himself in a special way for our 
redemption, and the Bible is the record of that 
revelation. This is its heart, its life. And anyone 
who makes the Bible anything else, is neglecting 
the body for the clothes it wears. 

II. Well, how did we get it? 

I talked with a young Mormon missionary the 
other day and he told me the old story of the book 
of Mormon. "It was written," said he, "on golden 
plates and let down from heaven. With them were 
some supernatural spectacles which should aid in 
their interpretation. Finally the angel led Joseph 
Smith to the spot where they were buried, and he 
with the aid of the spectacles was able to decipher 
them and translate them into the English lan- 
guage." 

I marveled at his credulity ! And yet it was not 
so very long ago that the Christian church ac- 
cepted a doctrine for its Bible very like that! It 
was easy to close one's eyes and believe a ready 
made Bible, let down from Heaven. It was easy 
to say over every difficulty that arose, "Thus saith 
the Lord." A ready made Bible furnished one 
with a fine arsenal of weapons for theological de- 
bate. It was easy to crush an antagonist with a 
divine fiat. When one lost himself in the mazes of 
perplexity, it was grand to have the Bible come 
down like a deus ex machina of the Greek tragedies, 
and set things all to rights. The Bible was a 
fetish. 

One has only to read the Book to realize that 



THE BIBLE 65 

we did not get it in that way. The men who wrote 
it were more than fifteen hundred years at their 
task. They were human beings, and they wrote 
with human fingers. Few of them had any idea 
that their work was to last, and become universal. 
Little did Moses dream when he came down from 
Sinai with the tables of stone, that he held in his 
hand the germ of universal law. Little did Paul 
imagine, when he took advantage of a chance mes- 
senger going to Rome, to send greetings to some 
of his friends there, that what he wrote would be- 
come a part of immortal story. 

Out of the deepest experiences of their hearts 
men wrote these books. Now in deepest penitence 
it is a sinful King pouring out his anguish; now 
it is the scribe of an ancient kingdom setting down 
the annals of a reign ; now it is a prophet on fire 
with a message of condemnation and deliverance; 
now it is a friend writing to a friend ; now it is a 
patriarch way back in the dawn of history setting 
down on tablets of clay traditions that have been 
handed down from father to son, no one knows 
how many thousand years ; now it is a loving dis- 
ciple writing down the record of His Lord's life 
and sayings, that a young friend of his and his 
companions may "believe also." 

Then slowly through the centuries these books 
were gotten together. Men found that they had 
a message of life. As they proved themselves of 
help to men in their search for the way of Life, 
they began to copy them and scatter them abroad. 



66 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

One was picked up here and another there, hap- 
hazard. At times some were made a part of the 
Book and were later rejected, because they did 
not contribute to the one thing for which men 
were seeking — a way of salvation from sin into 
the life of God. 

Finally an organization known as the church 
arose, and it took upon itself the task of gathering 
these sacred writings. Naturally enough there 
were many forgeries and false writings. In select- 
ing the genuine, the church was guided by definite 
principles, chief among which was "is this book 
directly concerned with salvation through Christ 
and true to the established facts of his life and 
teaching?" Thus it came to pass that after many 
years, certain books were given an authority above 
all others, the Word of God. 

And in all this copying and selecting process, 
the hand of God was at work also, sifting the chaff 
from the wheat. The hand of God is just as 
really evident in the work of deciphering manu- 
scripts as in the heart of the first writer himself. 

The Books we call the Bible, do not hold their 
place in its canon, because the church has said 
they are the Word of God. But they hold their 
place there, and are the Word of God, because 
they bring to humanity new life, new power, new 
hope, and vindicate themselves as such in the ex- 
perience of those who put them to the test. 

This then is how we got our Bible ! "Holy men 
of old wrote as they were moved by the Holy 



THE BIBLE 67 

Spirit." Men saw the value of what they wrote, 
and preserved their words. Slowly through the 
years the collection grew. Then those writings 
which seemed in accord with God's general revela- 
tion, and were in special accord with his revela- 
tion of himself as a Saviour, in Jesus Christ, were 
eliminated from the rest, because they seemed the 
highest and fitted best the needs of men in their 
desire for salvation from sin. 

The purpose of their writing and the test of 
their acceptance are summed up in one word — 
Christ. "We do not accept Christ, because the 
Bible tells us of him, but we accept the Bible, be- 
cause it testifies of a Christ we feel constrained to 
accept." In short it is the truth the Bible con- 
tains that makes it the Word of God, it is not our 
belief that it is the Word of God that makes its 
contents true. 

III. This brings us to the third question, Why 
do we believe it? 

We are accustomed to say we believe it because 
it is true. How do we know that? Is the Bible 
after all authoritative? If so, what makes it an 
"infallible rule of faith and practice?" "It is the 
truth," says someone. Yes, but what guarantee 
have we that it is the truth? "It is inspired." 
"Inspiration guarantees infallibility." What do 
we mean by inspiration? The word the Bible itself 
uses means "God-breathed." What is it for a 
writing to be God-breathed? 

There are some who think it means that God 



68 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

came, and put His stylus into the unknowing fin- 
gers of the writer, took away his mind and will, 
and Himself guided the fingers of man across the 
pages. The result was, that what man wrote was 
not his own, but actually the work of God, Every 
letter then, every curve, and mark was verily God's 
own. What was written was inerrant to the small- 
est jot and title. God simply dictated the work. 
Human will and judgment were suppressed. There 
cannot, therefore, be the slightest infusion of error. 

I search in vain through the Bible itself for 
some support for this mechanical theory. There 
is none. I look through the history of the church 
and I discover that this is the secret of that long, 
sad conflict between the world of scholarship and 
religion. I see what strifes and persecutions it has 
engendered, how it has turned men from Christ, 
and furnished the scoffer with an arsenal of 
weapons, to hurl against the religion of Jesus. 

There is no warrant anywhere for such a view. 
A careful study of the Bible itself will show us the 
error of this conception. "God-breathed," says 
the Book. And God is a Spirit. Impregnated 
with the Spirit of God — this is what inspiration 
means. It means that this whole book and the 
men that wrote it were so redolent with the Spirit 
of God, that what they wrote will actually accom- 
plish "that whereto He sent it," — the redemption 
of humanity. 

Inspired — yes, and inspiring. Lifting man from 
his lowest depths of sin and sorrow up into the life 



THE BIBLE 69 

of God. This is the purpose for which the Bible 
was given. As such it is infallible. It does not 
fail. That is what infallible means — "not failing." 
It does not mean inerrant, — without the slightest 
mixture of human imperfection. "Infallible as a 
rule of faith and practice." Not inerrant history 
and science! But, not failing of God's intended 
purpose, to give men a saving rule of conduct and 
life. 

When we say the Bible is inspired we mean this : 
That in its writing the presence of the Holy Spirit 
is more apparent than anywhere else, for here He 
was preparing for the greatest act of His love — 
the salvation of a race. The presence of this 
Spirit of God in their lives enabled the writers of 
the Bible to see God's saving truth more clearly 
than their fellows. They wrote it down knowing 
that it was God's truth, and authoritative as a rule 
of life and the key to God's salvation. 

When we say the inspired word is infallible, we 
mean that this inspiration secures for the Bible 
the accomplishing of the purpose for which God 
intended it. "My word shall not return unto me 
void." Void means failing of its intended purpose. 
The avowed purpose of God in the Bible is to lead 
men back to Him through the Messiah — Jesus 
Christ. It has no other purpose. In this purpose 
it does not fail. It is infallible. Use it to teach 
history, or science, and it does fail. It is not in- 
fallible. 

The Bible is the inspired, infallible word of God 



70 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

— a religious book destined to lead men into the 
life of God. 

IV. What then are we going to do about it? 

The wise man will put it to its intended use. 
He will search its pages reverently for the way of 
life. He will find enshrined in it the richest jewel 
in the diadem of God ? s love — the Saviour. He will 
learn of him who is the Way, the Truth and the 
Life. He will learn, it is true, of the awfulness of 
humanity's sin, but this will only serve to set forth 
in clearer lines the grandeur of God ? s glad salva- 
tion. As he ponders more and more upon its 
pages, as the truths it reveals become more and 
more a part of his being, he will find himself grow- 
ing gradually into a higher and better life. He 
will become "a new creature." 

The Bible is the food of the soul. It is that 
Divine manna upon which, the spirit feeding, is 
builded into the ruddy health of a true child of 
God. We are living in a robust age. Lives must 
be grandly moulded to meet the great issues of the 
hour. Life must be full of bounding heartiness, 
it must be firm in enduring stability, it must be 
boldly aggressive. There must be also an infinite 
capacity for patience, a mighty power of reserve 
force, and withal a willingness to fling the life un- 
reservedly to the service of the great causes that 
confront humanity. And these are the qualities 
of character the Bible is fitted, as no other force is 
fitted, to root and develop in the soul. 

The Bible is a great Book; the "Imperial 



THE BIBLE 71 

Book," one has called it. We are just beginning 
to understand what a wonderful Book it is. It 
used to be a narrow thing; full of dogmas and 
stern decrees. It is now a living, breathing book, 
filled with the grand, transcendent messages of 
God. 

So long as we keep it within its intended sphere, 
we need have no fear that any scientist or archeol- 
ogist or biologist can ever rob us of its precious 
truth. It is a book both human and divine. The 
warm blood of human hearts is in it. The divine 
love of the Father for His lost child, burns in its 
pages an undying flame. Through it all the 
golden letters of a redeeming God are written. 

What does it matter if the scientist can show us 
that its scientific teachings are all wrong; what 
matters it that the historian can show us some his- 
toric errors; what care we if the literary critic 
shows us that some of the things in it we have long 
thought were history, are poetry, or perhaps 
myths ! These can never take away the one 
mighty truth for which the Book was given, that 
it is possible for men once more to enter the life 
of God, and that Christ died for us men and our 
salvation. 

The world has many voices to tell it of God* 
Nature reveals Him as the Creator and Designer 
of all. The universe tells His infinity and His 
mighty power. The cup of the violet tells of His 
matchless beauty. The life of man reveals His 
wondrous Personality. 



72 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

We may find God in many ways. But until we 
have found Him as a Father and a Saviour we 
have failed utterly to know Him as He is. This 
the Bible and the Bible alone, reveals Him to be. 

"The Heavens declare Thy glory, Lord, 
From every star Thy wisdom shines, 
But when our eyes behold Thy Word 
We read Thy name in fairer lines. 

The rolling sun, the changing light, 

And night and days Thy power express. 

But the blest volume Thou hast writ 
Reveals Thy justice and Thy grace. 

The noblest wonders here we view 
Of souls renewed and sins forgiven. 

Lord, cleanse my sins, my soul renew, 

And make thy Word my guide to heaven." 



VI 
IS PRAYER A RATIONAL OCCUPATION? 



"We hear in these days of scientific enlighten- 
ment, a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of 
prayer; and many reasons are given us why we 
should not pray, whilst others are given us why we 
should. But in all this very little is said of the rea- 
son why we do pray, which is simply that we cannot 
help praying. It seems probable that, in spite of all 
that 'science' may do to the contrary, men will con- 
tinue to pray to the end of time. . . . 

William James, "Psychology " 

"Lord, I know not what I should ask of Thee. 
Thou only knowest what I want, and Thou lovest 
me, if I am Thy friend, more than I can love my- 
self. O Lord give to me, thy child, what is proper, 
whatsoever it be. I dare not ask either crosses or 
comforts, I only present myself before Thee. I 
open my heart to Thee. Behold my wants, of which 
I am ignorant, but do Thou behold and do accord- 
ing to Thy mercy. Smite or heal, depress or raise me 
up. I adore Thy purposes without knowing them. 
I am silent. I offer myself in sacrifice. I abandon 
myself to Thee. I have no desire but to accomplish 
Thy will. Lord, teach me to pray. I beseech Thee, 
dwell Thou Thyself in me by Thy Holy Spirit. 
Amen/' 

A prayer of Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray. 

"Yes, pray for whom thou lovest; if uncounted wealth 

were thine, 
The treasures of the boundless deep, the riches of 

the mine 
Thou couldst not to thy cherished friends a gift so 

dear impart, 
As the earnest benediction of a deeply prayerful 

heart/' 



IS PRAYER A RATIONAL OCCUPATION? 

The supplication of a righteous man availeth much 
in its working. James 5: 16 (R. V.) 

A Christian has been defined as an "enthusiast." 
When we think of some Christians we know, this 
at first seems a poor definition. But study it 
closely. Enthusiast — one of the grandest words 
in any language. It comes from a Greek word that 
is made up of two others. One of them means "in" 
and the other means "God." An enthusiast is one 
who has God in him. Grand definition of a Chris- 
tian ! The essense of Christianity is just this : En- 
thusiasm, God in us. "In Him we live and move 
and have our being." "Abide in me and I in you." 
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and 
that His Spirit dwelleth in you?" "Hereby we 
know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because 
He hath given us of His Spirit." 

Yes, the Bible abounds in the idea that the 
Christian is an enthusiast. That it is the indwell- 
ing presence of God that makes him what he is. 
Let us insist on this. Christianity is not a creed 
nor an emotion, a feeling nor a ritual. It is God 
abiding in the soul. 

It is a false teaching that has magnified the 
transcendence of God, until it pictures Him seated 
on a throne in the highest heavens, an absentee 
King. God does sit on His throne of glory at the 
centre of His Kingdom. But His throne is the 

75 



76 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

human heart. "The Kingdom of God is within 
you," said Jesus. This is not Pantheism. We are 
not gods. The Spirit of God does not identify 
Himself with our spirits. He dwelleth in us, the 
Divine Companion and Fellow Worker. He tran- 
scends us, it is true ; but he transcends as does the 
sunlight, entering every corner of the darkened 
room, driving away its shadows, purifying its 
damp and musty air, imparting new life, new 
strength. 

Now, it is impossible that God should thus dwell 
in the life, and His presence there, go unexpressed 
in the world without. "Out of the heart are the 
issues of life." I heard the president of my col- 
lege say once, that if one should take a lance and 
open his heart he would find the college there. 
One did not need thus to do, to determine what his 
pre-eminent temporal interest was. His whole life 
was an outward expression of the inner passion 
of his heart. 

It is thus also in the deepest interests of the 
soul. A "God intoxicated man" dwells in no 
walled city. No chambered crustacean is he, living 
in a shell. The outward expression of the Deity 
that dwells within him is inevitable. 

"So must our lips and lives express 
The holy gospel we profess, 
So must our works and virtues shine 
To prove the doctrine all divine/' 

In his famous book, "Quiet Talks on Prayer," 
Dr. Gordon tells us there are five outlets by which 



IS PRAYER RATIONAL 77 

the God in us is destined to make His presence 
known. 

First, through the life — what we are. The 
spirit we carry, the character we possess, and even 
the look upon our faces, will tell men of the Pres- 
ence within. 

Secondly, through our lips — what we say. It 
may be said stammeringly and falteringly, but a 
heart burning with the Divine Flame, like Peter 
and John, "cannot but speak the things which it 
has seen and heard." 

Thirdly, through our service — what we do. It 
may be done blunderingly, but as with Jesus in 
whom "The fullness of God dwelt" we "must do 
the works of Him that sent us." 

Fourthly, through our property — what we pos- 
sess. The way a man uses his money is one of the 
surest ways of telling what is the chief interest of 
his heart. A God-filled man means a God-emptied 
purse. 

Lastly, through our prayers. One cannot have 
God dwelling in his heart and not commune with 
Him. Friends will not stay in our home long if 
we ignore their presence there. When a man 
ceases to pray he exiles God from his heart. 

And prayer is the greatest outlet of them all. 
Time and circumstance put no limit on prayer. It 
opens the whole universe to the power of a man's 
personality and enlarges his opportunity to the 
limits of the planet. 

What is prayer? It is not a formula, nor a 



78 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

liturgy. It is the soul of man reaching out after 
God. 

"Prayer is the soul's sincere desire 
Uttered or unexpressed, 
The motion of a hidden fire 
That trembles in the breast." 

Prayer is an instinct, that bids man in his need, 
seek the companionship of the Immanent Presence. 
The soul feels a longing. It cannot explain that 
longing. Instinct bids it seek God, and seeking, it 
finds. 

The essence of prayer is communion, not peti- 
tion. Prayer is not trying to wrest something 
from an unwilling God, who is "more ready to 
give good gifts," than His children are to ask. 
It is communion. Something is always saying to 
the heart of man : 

"Speak to Him, for He heareth, 

And spirit with spirit can meet. 
Closer is He than breathing, 
Nearer than hands and feet. ,, 

Prayer is opening up the flood gates of the 
soul, that God may flow in and through them all. 
"Prayer is digging channels, through which the 
Infinite may flow to water the deserts of life." 
Prayer is an attitude, that puts one into contact 
with God. It is a psychological act on the part 
of man whereby he enters into conscious contact 
with the Deity. 



IS PRAYER RATIONAL 79 

"Say. what is prayer, when it is prayer indeed, 
The mighty utterance of a mighty need? 
The man is praying who doth press with might 
Out of his darkness into God's own light." 

When a man ceases to pray the contact is 
broken. Therefore, "we ought always to pray and 
not faint." When they were laying the Atlantic 
cable it snapped one day in mid ocean. The 
broken end sank to the bottom of the sea. Now 
those on shore, who had been receiving messages 
across the wire, heard them no more. In their 
place was a continuous jargon of rappings picked 
up from the earth currents where the broken end 
touched the bottom. At last one day they noticed 
a change, and they listened. Slowly the needle 
spelled out the words "Got it." And then they 
knew that human intelligence way out there in mid 
ocean had once more taken hold of the broken 
end. 

Such is the experience of the man who does not 
pray. He had broken contact with Intelligence, 
and only vague and wandering messages can fill his 
soul. Let him begin again, and he is once more 
"in tune with the Infinite." 

But though the essence of prayer is communion, 
there is no denying that petition — asking God for 
things — is a large part of it. And rightly so. "'Ask 
and ye shall receive." "Whatsoever ye shall ask 
in my name that will I do." The Lord's prayer is 
full of petition, and asking for things in the name 
of Jesus is a part of every true prayer. "In the 



80 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

name of Jesus" — that is the key to the petitioning 
prayer. "Thy will be done," — such is the spirit of 
successful prayer. There is really but one true 
petition, "Thy will be done." 

"I find it impossible to say that," a mother said, 
"for I am afraid God will do His will." "Suppose," 
said a friend, "your little Charlie should come 
running to you and say, 'Mother I have made up 
my mind to let you have your own way with me 
from now on. I am always going to obey you, 
and I want you to do just what you think best 
with me. I will trust your love.' How would you 
feel toward him? Would you say to yourself, 'Now, 
I have a chance to make Charlie miserable. I will 
take away all his pleasures, and fill his life with 
every hard thing I can find. 5 " 

"No, no, no," exclaimed the mother; "I would 
just hug him to my heart and cover his face with 
kisses, and would hasten to fill his life with all that 
is sweetest and best." "Are you, then, more tender 
and loving than God?" And the mother under- 
stood. 

The world is full of answers to true prayer. 
Most mysterious are its wonders. Its reality is a 
tested truth. 

I have heard of a lawyer sent down into the 
slums to evict some delinquent tenants, but he re- 
turns to his client, his mission unperformed. He 
tells him the reason why. "I found the house and 
knocked, but nobody heard me. I stepped into the 
hall, and through the door I saw propped up on 



IS PRAYER RATIONAL 81 

the pillows of her bed, an aged woman. I was 
about to knock again, when I heard her say, 'Come, 
father, now begin. I am ready.' Then I saw an 
old, white haired man kneeling by her bedside. I 
heard him pray. First, he reminded God that they 
were still His submissive children, and whatever He 
saw fit to bring them, they would accept. It would 
be hard for them to be homeless in their old age, 
and would have been different if the boys had lived. 
Then he quoted the promises that assure the safety 
of those that put their trust in Him. Last of all he 
prayed God's blessing on those who were demand- 
ing justice. Then a thin, white hand stole out from 
the coverlet and moved softly through his snowy 
hair." 

"I would rather go to the poorhouse tonight 
myself than stain my heart and hands with such 
persecution as that." 

"I wish," said the client, "that you had not told 
me this." 

"Why so?" 

"Well, because I need the money that house will 
bring. Another time I would not listen to peti- 
tions not intended for my ears." 

"My dear fellow, you are wrong. That prayer 
was intended for my ears and yours, too. God 
Almighty meant it so. My mother used to pray 
like that." 

"And so did mine. You can call in the morning 
and tell mother and him that the claim has been 
met." 



82 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Ah, but someone says, that story savors too 
much of the old-fashioned days. Well, here is one 
out of the real red blood of today. 

Tad Jones, the Yale quarterback, is making a 
speech at a banquet that celebrates a victory over 
Harvard. It has been a brilliant speech. Now 
he has stopped. But he does not sit down. Slowly 
he begins again: "It's a funny thing to tell here, 
fellows, but I want to say that this morning I felt 
that I did not have strength to go into this game. 
I went to my room and prayed, and when I came 
down, I had it. It was the best game of my 
career." 

Yes, God answers prayer. Someway, somehow, 
the answer comes. 

But are all prayers answered? What about 
those to which no answer has ever come? 

Let us frankly admit that some prayers are not 
answered. God will not answer a selfish prayer. 
There have been times when the wicked have prayed 
in their extremity, not because of a heart longing 
to know God, but hoping to bribe God into re- 
moving the penalty of their wickedness. There are 
others who love to pray in the corners of the 
streets, to be seen of men. They do not go down 
to their house "justified." There are some who 
turn weary prayer wheels, calling "O, great ador- 
able Budda," in endless repetition. Others finger 
beads upon a string, and utter the meaningless 
jargon of the Rosary, "Hail Mary, Hail Mary." 
Alas, from such prayers, the soul of man turns 
away empty. God has not answered. 



IS PRAYER RATIONAL 88 

But what of those thousands of sincere longings 
of true hearts that have apparently heard no an- 
swer? Many a soul has had the courage to say 
"thy will be done" over some fond desire, and can- 
not yet see the blessing of God. The longing is 
apparently denied. Apparently, we said. Yes, for 
many prayers have real answers that are not ap- 
parent. 

Sometimes the answer is poured out in such 
abundance that the blessing is not recognized. I 
know a mother in w r hose home a beautiful girl, the 
sunshine of many a life, lay sick. And the mother's 
prayer was that her child might live, and in her 
good Christian heart she had the faith to say "thy 
will be done." The child was taken. God's will 
was done. Out of that experience there has come 
to many, enlarged life, for which earth is happier, 
and life itself sweeter and nobler. Now, that 
mother sees of the travail of her soul and is satis- 
fied. The thing for which she really prayed — 
eternal blessedness and peace — is hers, and the 
answer has been poured out in such fullness that 
human eye cannot measure it. 

Sometimes the answer comes in such a different 
way than we expect, that we do not recognize it. 
Augustine's mother prayed that her worldly boy 
might not go to Rome and face the temptations of 
the city. Notwithstanding her prayers he went. 
But through that visit he met Ambrose, and was 
by him led to Christ and became the greatest Chris- 
tian of his day. In his Confessions he says of his 



84 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

mother's prayer: "Thou, my God, didst not give 
her what she asked then, but by refusing that, 
didst give her what she was always asking." 

Sometimes the answers are long delayed that 
the blessing may be all the greater. That was 
the experience of Hannah. Her prayer was for a 
son. But alas, the woe of the Hebrew woman was 
hers. She was barren. Meanwhile her rival is 
taunting her with her barrenness until we are told 
"in the bitterness of her soul she wept sore." Long 
years of agonized praying went on. There was 
no answer. Then, in her old age a son is born. 
Now that the answer is given, she can see the pur- 
pose of those long years of waiting and suffering, 
when God had apparently forgotten her. God was 
in need of a great man. And great men must have 
great mothers. Wherefore the discipline of the 
years that gave Samuel to the world. 

Yes, God answers prayer. Man's extremity is 
always His opportunity, and sometimes He waits 
till then to answer. Before Jerusalem are en- 
camped the hosts of Sennacherib. For days there 
have been sounded in the ears of good King Heze- 
kiah, the taunts of Gentile insolence. He can hold 
out no longer. Now he is discovered kneeling in 
the house of prayer. Before him on the altar is 
the taunting letter of Sennacherib. His voice is 
heard: "0, Lord of hosts, God of Israel, that 
dwellest between the cherubim ; thou art God, even 
thou alone; . . . save us from the hand of Sen- 
nacherib, that all the kingdoms of the earth may 
know that thou art God and thou alone." 



IS PRAYER RATIONAL 85 

Then with startling suddenness we are told, 
"Straightway an angel of the Lord went forth and 
smote the camp of the Assyrians, and they were 
troubled and hasted away." 

"The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, 
His cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold. 
Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, 
That host with its banners at sunset is seen. 
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn has blown, 
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown; 
For the angel of God spread his wings on the blast, 
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed ; 
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, 
Hath melted like snow at the glance of the Lord/' 

But this is not all. Prayer has also its blessed 
ministry on the soul of man himself. There is a 
reflex influence through prayer upon the soul of 
him who prays and those for whom he prays. 
"Prayer," says James Lane Allen, "will in time 
make the human countenance its own divinest al- 
tar ; years of holy thoughts, like music shut within, 
will vibrate along the nerves of expression until 
the lines of the living instrument are drawn into 
correspondence, and the harmony of visible form 
matches the unheard harmony of the mind." 

Prayer is the secret of the "Christian face." 
When Moses comes down from Sinai, his face 
shines with a heavenly gleam. He has been in 
communion with God. When the Son of Man is 
transfigured, we are told that "as he prayed, the 
fashion of his countenance was altered and his 



86 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

raiment white and glistering." When Stephen 
stands before his persecutors in the sanhedrin, we 
are told "he lifted up his face, and they that sat 
in the council saw r it, as it had been been the face 
of an angel." 

"Lord, what a change within us one short hour 
Spent in Thy presence will prevail to make ! 
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, 
What parched grounds refresh as with a shower ! 
We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; 
We rise, and all the distant and the near 
Stands forth, a sunny outline brave and clear, 
We kneel — how weak ! We rise — how full of power ! 
Why, wherefore should we do ourselves this 

wrong — 
Or others — that we are not always strong, 
That we are ever overborne with care 
That we should ever weak or heartless be, 
Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, 
And joy, and strength, and courage are with Thee.'* 

And again, prayer has a blessed ministry in the 
lives of those for whom we pray. No volume could 
contain the vast witness to the power of interces- 
sory prayer. Telepathy is no new thing. The 
wireless telegraph was anticipated thousands of 
years by those spiritual currents that have been 
passing through the centuries from soul to soul. 
We cannot explain it. We believe it for the same 
reason we believe in this latest wonder of science. 
We see its effects. Amazing are its wonders. 
Jesters scoff at it and scientists deny it, but some- 
how the soul of man believes in it, tries it and finds 
it true. 



IS PRAYER RATIONAL 87 

"The weary ones had rest, the sad had joy that day; 
They wondered how; 
A plowman singing at his work had prayed 
God help them now. 

Away in foreign lands they wondered how 
Their simple word had power; 

At home, some Christians two or three, 
Had met to pray an hour. 

Yes, we are always wondering, wondering how, 

Because we do not see 
Someone, unknown perhaps, and far away, 

On bended knee. ,, 

"More things are wrought by prayer than this 
world dreams of." The world is full of answers 
for him who has eyes to see and ears to hear. The 
soul of man can no more live without prayer than 
breathing creatures can live without air. It is the 
clear, pure ozone of the City of God. 

"Prayer is the Christian's vital breath, 
The Christian's native air, 
His watchword at the gates of death; 
He enters Heaven with prayer." 

Wherefore, Christian, "Watch and Pray." 



VII 
CAN I GET BACK TO CHILDHOOD ? 



"Grow old along with me 
The best is vet to be; 

The last of life for which the first was made. 
Our lives are in his hand 
Who saith, "The whole I planned 
Youth shows but half. 
Trust God, see all; nor be afraid. " 

Robert Browning, "Rabbi Ben Ezra," 

"We cannot put back the clock, and no philosophy 
can obliterate the difference between seventy and 
twenty-one. Of each one of us, if we live long 
enough, the poet's words will be true: 'He heard 
the voice that tells men they are old/ The 
march of physical processes is unceasing, and goes 
on without our consent being asked. The heart is a 
laborer to whom we pay no wages, with whom we hold 
no conversation, who gets his orders elsewhere, who 
elects to work, and at the end to cease to work with- 
out any say of ours in the matter. And so of the 
other organs. When their energies slacken we feel 
it, but cannot alter the situation. The body ages as 
a plant or planet ages, by a rhythmic, immutable 
process. . . . Juvenescence does not necessarily 
carry with it animal health, strength, or length of 
days. But it means throughout life a feeling of 
youth, a glorious exultancy, a growing and spiritual 
soul." 

J. Brierley, "Problems of Living." 



CAN I GET BACK TO CHILDHOOD? 

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the 
young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait 
upon Jehovah shall renew their strength : they shall 
mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and 
not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 
40:80, 81. 

In the month of February, 1512, a company of 
Spanish navigators landed on the flowery strand 
of Florida. They had braved a long and tem- 
pestuous voyage across an unknown sea, leaving 
behind them homes and loved ones in sunny Spain. 
They were indeed a motley crew. Most of them 
were well past middle life, and bore the marks of 
elegant refinement that marks the royal blood of 
a Spanish grandee. The gay colors of their silken 
trappings blended harmoniously with the splendor 
of the flower-laden shore. 

Their leader was a man of high standing in the 
Spanish army. He had accompanied Columbus on 
his second voyage, and was now leading an expedi- 
tion of his own to the new-found continent. His 
name was Ponce de Leon, and his was a daring 
scheme. 

Halting for a few days on the beach, he left his 
ship in charge of a few sailors, and pushed into 
the heart of the swamps and everglades of the un* 
known land. He waded murky and muddy rivers ; 
he penetrated deep glades walled with moss and 
overhanging shrubbery. Foes of every kind as- 

91 



92 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

sailed him. Poisonous insects harassed him by 
night ; hissing serpents lay across the path, and 
alligators grinned from the marshes. The water 
they drank was alive with typhus and malaria. 
And worst of all, savage natives opposed their 
every step. 

They died by tens and twenties. The food soon 
failed ; their clothing was torn to shreds. At last, 
with only a remnant of the proud number that 
started a few months before, the leader himself 
sorely wounded with a poisoned arrow, a retreat 
was started. Only a few reached the ocean. They 
escaped in a small boat to Cuba. In a Spanish 
fort on the island was found a record of their fate- 
ful trip. 

What was this all about? These men were 
searching for the Fountain of Immortal Youth. 
They were not the first to long for that mystic 
fountain where the scars of years might be washed 
away forever. The great lament of life has al- 
ways been 

"Ah, that spring should vanish with the rose, 
That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should 

close ! 
The Nightingale that in the branches sang, 
Ah, whence and whither flown again, who knows !" 

We want to get back to childhood and keep our 
youth forever. If men were given two choices of 
all the dreams they dream, one of them would be 
for the philosopher's stone with which to turn iron 
into gold. The other would be for that fountain 



BACK TO CHILDHOOD 98 

of immortal youth which Ponce de Leon sought in 
vain in the everglades of Florida. 
We want to get back to childhood. 

"Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years ! 
I am so weary of toil and of tears — 
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain — 
Take them, and give me my childhood again!" 

Age has come to be regarded as an evil. It 
avails nothing that a wise man tells us that a 
"hoary head is a crown of glory." What boots it 
that Cicero and a hundred other philosophers dis- 
course beautifully on the delights of old age? We 
want to be young. We are "living in an age of 
young men," and the dread of the "dead line" and 
Oslerism are ever before us. In comparison with 
life's burdens, responsibilities and sorrows, how 
happy and free seem those days of long ago. Oh, 
that we could get back to the old home and roam 
once more the hills; sit by the fireside again and 
hear the voices of childhood's friends. 

"How dear to my heart are the scenes of my child- 
hood, 

When fond recollection presents them to view; 

The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wild 
wood, 

And all the loved spots that my infancy knew!** 

There is a legend among the fishermen of Brit- 
tany that tells of the buried city of Is. With its. 
homes and temples and thronged streets it sank 
one day into the depths of the sea. The legend 



94 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

says that the city's life goes on now as it used to, 
beneath the waves of the sea. Fishermen as they 
row across the place in fair weather, think some- 
times they see the gleaming spires of the city, and 
fancy they can hear the chiming of the bells and 
the murmur of the city's life. Some men live like 
that, in a buried city, where all is submerged save 
the memory of far off joys they used to know. 

"Deep under the waves of our hurried lives 
Lies buried the city of Is so fair, 
And we oft can hear on the still night air 
The bells as they toll with saddest notes 
The dirge of our hopes that are buried there." 

What then are we to do? We cannot get back 
to the days of childhood, as we used to know them 
long ago. Too many years of sin and sorrow lie 
between. Nor should we be happy if we could. 
Even if some magic potion could again transfer 
us to the old scenes, the meadows would have lost 
their charm, the orchard its luscious fruit, the 
flowers their perfume. The water in "the old 
oaken bucket" would be brackish and unclean. We 
are men now, and childish things can delight us no 
longer, no matter how fair the dream of them may 
be. What then, shall we do? 

We can sit down in despair if we will and deter- 
mine to make the best of a bad bargain. Or we 
can steel our hearts against advancing years and 
become soured cynics. We can fall back on the 
Fatalism of the Epicureans and "eat, drink and 
be merry." 



BACK TO CHILDHOOD 95 

"Ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears 
To-day of past regrets and future fears, 
To-morrow — why to-morrow I may be 
Myself with yesterday's seven thousand years. " 

But Stoicism and Cynicism and Epicureanism 
are poor philosophies for the restless heart of man. 
They do not satisfy his dream of immortal youth. 
The longing still abides. Must it always be so? 
When freshness fades, and the grass withers, is 
there no reviving rain ? When the chord of youth 
is lost, is music gone forever from the soul? When 
one galaxy of stars sinks behind the horizon of 
the past, has light departed forever from the 
heaven of the heart? 

No ! There is a fountain of immortal youth 
whose waters never fail. When young men faint 
and are weary, there is a process of the soul 
whereby "they shall renew their strength, they 
shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run 
and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." 
There is a fountain of inexhaustible and immortal 
strength. There is a life that is young forever. 
No decay is there in its being, no weariness in its 
effort. 

When we analyze this longing of ours, we dis- 
cover that it is not so much childhood that we 
want, as childhood's purity, childhood's peace, 
childhood's hope. 

One day, toward the close of King David's 
troubled reign, when his native village was infested 
with Philistine enemies, and he fleeing before them, 



96 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

the old king looking back on the scenes of child- 
hood, murmurs aloud, "O, that one would give me 
to drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem 
which is by the gate." Three of his mighty men 
hear his prayer, and risking their lives, they run 
to gratify his wish. But when they have brought 
the water, the aged king will not drink it. It is 
not water that this old soldier wants. He wants 
to get back to childhood. He wants to go to the 
well of Bethlehem, as he used to, when a shepherd 
boy among the hills. Then, with the water of 
Bethlehem in his hand, he comes to understand 
that it is not childhood after all for which he longs. 
But it is childhood's glad, free heart. 

And just as David at last got back to child- 
hood, so may you and I. "They that wait upon 
Jehovah shall renew their strength." Have we 
not seen them, you and I? Men to whom life has 
grown stale and sordid, — enthusiasm dead and 
hopes killed — aged men — suddenly flame with a 
new youth, a new strength. These men have been 
with God. Like Enoch, they have walked with 
Him who is the Fountain of Life. And just as 
the cold, dead wire flashes with a new genius when 
it touches the dynamo, these lives whom God has 
touched are born again. "With Thee is the foun- 
tain of life." 

But how does this contact with God thus wash 
away the scars of years and kindle anew the fire 
of a joyous youth? 

It gives one, first of all, a new vision. A man 



BACK TO CHILDHOOD 97 

can rise no higher than his look. And his altitude 
determines his perspective. When God touches 
his life, the call is first of all, "Get thee up into a 
high mountain." And the cry is, "Lift up thine 
eyes, now, Behold !" 

To see life from the perspective of God's throne, 
is to rescue it from weariness and age. The eternal 
years are His. The oldest angels in His presence 
are the youngest. Linked to him who views the 
passing centuries as a day, there is offered the 
soul of man a vision, that keeps the heart young 
forever. 

The touch of God kindles new affections. Say 
what we will about the glories of the head, it is 
the heart that is the man. As our emotions rise 
and fall, life is young or old. Not whitening hair 
nor dimming eye, but dying emotions, compel men 
to say, "He is growing old." Nothing drives away 
the wrinkles and fills the sunken cheeks like love. 
There is no cosmetic to compare with a new affec- 
tion, a new devotion. What makes the heart of 
man grow old and tired is his cleavage to the fad- 
ing dust of temporal things. But God quickens 
the heart with a spiritual life, warms it until it 
glows with love for eternal things, and under the 
spell of this new flame, that burns but does not 
consume, there is born a new and ruddy youth. 

They that wait upon Jehovah have born in 
them a new hope. The secret of childhood's buoy- 
ancy is its hopes. We should reverse the old say- 
ing: "While there is hope there is life." When 



98 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

hope begins to die, the candle of life flickers. I 
know one, — a mother. Out from her bosom and 
her home, a few years ago, there went a young 
man in all the pride of youth. A year passed, and 
men began to notice that the mother was aging 
fast. To me she told her secret. Her boy had 
become a drunkard. The months went by, and the 
furrows grew deeper and the hair whiter. Despair 
gripped the mother's heart. One day she sent for 
me. What a change! Ten years younger she 
seemed. A letter told the story of her renewed 
youth. Her boy had made a new start, and hope, 
burning in her mother's heart, had brought back 
the bloom of youth. 

When God enters the heart new hopes are born ; 
hopes that keep the life young forever. 

Yea, there is a Fountain of Youth. It is not 
some magic pool where the marks of time may be 
washed from human bodies. The secret of it 
rather is in this, — that the true life God begets 
within, never grows old. Our true home never 
was back there amid the delights of youth. It is 
away beyond the hills of Bethlehem, far into the 
eternal hills of God. The "water of the well of 
Bethlehem," was good enough for the morning, 
but there is a well, whose deeper, purer drafts are 
the secret of immortal youth. 

Behold the Son of Man as he sits in weariness 
by the well of Jacob in Samaria. A woman comes 
with her waterpots. "Give me to drink." The 
answer is contempt. "If thou knewest the gift of 



BACK TO CHILDHOOD 99 

God and who it is that saith unto thee, 'Give me 
to drink,' thou wouldst have asked him, and he 
would have given thee living water." "Whoso 
drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whoso 
drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall 
never thirst. But it shall be in him a well of water 
springing up into immortal life." 

This is the water for which David longed three 
thousand years ago. This is that for which every 
heart is calling when it cries : "Oh, if I could only 
get back to childhood !" What we are crying for 
is not childhood. It is the water of life. 

Have we lived long enough to learn the experi- 
ence of sin? If we have, we are crying now for 
childhood's sweet innocence and purity. 

Have we felt the aging burden of disappoint- 
ment and sorrow and bereavement, until we are 
verily, feeding on ashes? We are sighing, then, 
for childhood's happiness. 

Has fortune showered her gifts upon us till, 
sated with her pleasures, we are longing for the 
freedom and freshness of youth's ambitions? 

Was there a day long ago when we came to 
Christ in a burst of loyal enthusiasm? And has 
that enthusiasm slowly ebbed, until it is gone? 
"Where is the joy that once I felt, when first I 
knew the Lord?" 

It may be that we have come now to where the 
shadows lengthen. Earth's life will soon be over. 
Are we depressed as we sit alone and sigh for "the 
tender grace of a day that is dead?" 



100 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Let us then remember this : Our Father expects 
us to be children still. "Except ye be converted 
and become as little children, ye shall not enter 
the Kingdom of Heaven." If we want the joys of 
childhood, we are not to look back, but upward and 
onward. The Father cared too much for us to 
leave us forever in the innocent realm of morn- 
ing's fair dreams. But He led us into larger life, 
that through it and beyond it we might see the 
dawn of a new morning, the birth of a new child- 
hood. 

We may, — we can be young forever. Every 
summer the little German village of Hildesheim is 
crowded with tourists. There are many quaint 
and wonderful things to be seen in Hildesheim. 
There are houses there that were old when Colum- 
bus sailed into the unknown sea; a cathedral that 
was dedicated in the days of Charlamagne; and 
many other modern wonders. But that which 
causes all to wonder is "der tausendejahrige rosen- 
stock," the thousand-year-old rose bush. There 
it is, crawling over the chancel wall, running high 
up in the arches of the building, and every sum- 
mer covering the place with creamy roses, just as 
it has done for a thousand summers. Aged, though 
it is, there is no suggestion of age about it. It is 
as full of freshness and vigor as it was three hun- 
dred years ago when the world first began to 
notice it. 

What God has done for the rose of Hildesheim, 
God does for us. Somewhere we are standing to- 



BACK TO CHILDHOOD 101 

day along life's journey. Perhaps we are in the 
dawn and facing still the beckoning noonday. It 
may be we have entered the afternoon of life. Per- 
haps the twilight shadows are gathering. A strange 
longing oppresses us. It is the longing to be a 
child again. We may be, — every one. Let us turn 
our eyes from the backward look, away to the eter- 
nal hills, where shines on the clear waters of the 
river of life, the sun that heralds a new morning 
and a new childhood in the Kingdom of God. 

"Can peach renew lost bloom? 
Or violet lost perfume? 
Or sullied snow turn white as overnight? 
Man cannot compass it; yet never fear; 
The leper Naaman 
Shows w T hat God will and can > 
God, who worked there, is working here; 
Wherefore let joy, not gloom, betinge thy brow, 
God who worked then, is working now/' 



VIII 
CAN I FORGET THE PAST ? 



"Many of you remember Mason's story of 'The 
Four Feathers/ the story of an officer in the British 
army, who threw up his commission just as his regi- 
ment had been ordered to the Soudan. He went im- 
mediately to visit the girl whom he expected to 
marry. While in her presence he opened a little box, 
that came from three of his fellow officers in the regi- 
ment, and out of it fell three white feathers. The 
girl wanted to know what they meant, and he told the 
whole story to her. It was what three of his fellow 
officers thought about him. Then she broke another 
feather from her fan and told him to go. He went 
out that night with four white feathers as his legacy, 
as the legacy of his past. He went out resolving that 
he would make each of those four take a feather back. 
He went to the Soudan disguised as a Greek min- 
strel. There, by risking his life to save some letters 
of Chinese Gordon's that had been buried under the 
walls of Berber, he got one of his friends to take 
back his feather. Another died before he got his 
feather redeemed, and one of the three went to the 
stone prison house of Omdurman. There Feversham 
followed him, shared his peril, and delivered him to 
freedom, and the third feather was taken back. And 
last of all the girl took her feather back, and the man 
became what he never would have been but for the 
failure of the past. And the grace of Christ in re- 
demption can work greater miracles than that." 

Robert Speer, Simplicity and Complexity of Life." 



CAN I FORGET THE PAST? 

This one thing I do, forgetting those things which 
are behind, and reaching forth unto those things 
which are before, I press toward the mark for the 
prize of the high calling in Christ Jesus, Philip- 
pians 3:13, 14. 

The greatest discovery ever made by man was 
the discovery of himself. Whether "Minerva like" 
he sprang full orbed from the lips of God, or 
whether he "rose at last in mere fortuitous hour," 
from the lairs of beasts, there was a time when he 
first said, "I am." That day the image of God 
was born in earth's highest creature. Man had 
discovered himself, and in the light of that sub- 
lime discovery he walked into a new day. 

There have been times then when man has 
doubted the reality of his existence. But the very 
fact that he can doubt his existence proves his 
existence real. For to doubt is to think, and to 
think is to be. Augustine and Descartes summed 
it up in the classic axiom, "Cogito, ergo sum" (I 
think, therefore, I am). No idealism can wreck 
this fundamental belief in the reality of being. 

But here is only the beginning of problems. Out 
of man's self-discovery have risen the problems of 
his origin, his aims, his end. 

Among them all not the least is the question, 
"What makes me what I am" — the problem of 
identity. "I am changing, and yet I am the same. 

105 



106 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

How do I know I am the same person I was ten, 
twenty, thirty years ago?" 

Last summer in the attic of my mother's home, 
I came upon an old and faded photograph. I 
recognized it at once. It was mine own. I asked 
myself, "How do I know that I am the same per- 
son now as when that picture was taken a quarter 
of a century ago?" There is apparently no re- 
semblance between me and that face that looks into 
mine from the faded photograph. 

I am a different being physically. Several times 
since then I have put on a new robe of flesh. Not 
a particle of the physical fibre of my being in that 
far off day remains. 

I am a different being intellectually. The mo- 
tives and thoughts and desires of my life have 
nothing in common with this youth that claims to 
be myself. 

I am socially a different being. Not a single 
companion or association or surrounding of that 
day remains. They are all gone, and I live in an 
entirely different social universe. 

And yet I am certain that this face I see there 
is mine own. I remember it as if it were only yes- 
terday! How miserable I felt all dressed up in 
my Sunday best, starched and ironed, sitting there 
looking into the mouth of a cannon ! I remember 
the trials of my mother and the photographer to 
make me "look pleasant, please !" I recall how 
at a critical moment there rose from behind the 
camera a little squeaking bird, and while my eyes 



CAN I FORGET THE PAST 107 

were opened in wonder at this new mystery, the 
camera man snapped me, and snapped me for- 
ever ! 

Now I am looking into that face, and I know it 
is myself. How do I know it? 

Last night I fell asleep, and lost myself in eight 
hours of oblivion. When I woke this morning, 
how did I know that I was the same being that fell 
asleep the night before? How did I happen to 
recognize myself again when for eight hours con- 
sciousness had been obliterated? 

Briefly this answer — I remembered ! So far as 
we can know, it is memory that makes identity. It 
is the one thing that is eternal. Aristotle calls it 
the "scribe of the soul." Another the "cabinet of 
the heart." Another the "golden warp of life's 
loom." 

Memory is the process whereby we call up a past 
event or circumstance of which we have not mean- 
while been thinking, and recognize it as our own. It 
is recognition of our own past being that makes 
identity. The river flows through the same banks 
century after century. It, too, is changing. We 
call it the same river, but the river does not know 
it is the same. It has no memory. The second- 
hand on my watch has been ticking for a decade. 
Once every minute it goes through the same ex- 
perience as on every preceding minute. But it 
does not remember. The mere repetition of an 
experience is not memory. It does not recognize 
the landmarks over which it passes as a part of its 
own past. 



108 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

It is otherwise with man. I know yon faded 
photograph is mine own, because I can trace back 
the experiences of a quarter of a century, to the 
day when it was taken, and I remember them all 
as my own. 

What a wonderful thing is memory ! What is 
this grand gift of recall? How comes it that I 
can remember, and out of a past long since dead, 
identify its experiences as my own? 

Let the psychologist unfold in part the mystery 
of this strange phenomenon. 

Whatever may be the processes of thought in the 
life of spiritual being beyond this realm of body, 
certain it is that the brain of man is the seat of 
memory now. There is a physical basis for our 
present memories, whatever may be the conditions 
hereafter. The brain is the centre and clearing 
house of all thought and all activity. 

The brain is a bundle of nerve — living nerve — 
most delicately organized. It is the most sensitive 
thing known. A million times more impressionable 
than the phonographic disc, its business is to re- 
cord spiritual impressions of infinite variety and 
number, and to send them vibrating throughout 
the whole being, along a network of nerves, that 
radiate everywhere like electric wires from a 
dynamo. 

Examine a nerve beneath a microscope. It re- 
sembles a piece of gray cotton thread. Cross sec- 
tion it, and you discover at its heart a grayish 
substance, exceedingly plastic. It is this same 



CAN I FORGET THE PAST 109 

"gray matter" that is found to saturate the surface 
of the brain's hemispheres. This is the vital cle- 
ment of the nerve. Along it sensations travel from 
every part of the body like telegrams along a wire 
and register themselves on the surface of the brain. 
Every experience of life, every sensation, every 
inner prompting, is thus flashed to this great clear- 
ing house of thought — the brain. 

There is something hidden by the creator within 
that mystic substance, that has power to convert 
these sensations into ideas and register them there. 
And the idea thus formed, as it flashes in turn to 
the registering centre, wears a little pathway as it 
goes. The cortex of the brain is a network of 
these invisible highways. When the same idea 
enters a second time it travels over the same path- 
way as before. The wonderful thing about these 
pathways is that they persist. Once an idea has 
registered itself on the surface of the brain it is 
never wholly lost. Let the experience be repeated, 
and the corresponding brain path will be intensi- 
fied, the impression strengthened and recall made 
more easy. That is why the constant repetition 
of a thing is the greatest aid to memory. The 
process is wearing the paths a little deeper and 
deeper. 

What a startling conception the psychologist 
has given us. Here is the secret of habit ! There 
comes a time when an idea, persistently recurring, 
has worn its entrance so deep that its passage 
along the brain path is without resistance, and its 
corresponding action involuntary ! It is a habit ! 



110 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

It is these persisting brain paths over which 
recurring ideas pass, and our ability to recognize 
them when agitated again and again, that we 
call the phenomenon of memory. 

But this is not all of memory. For these path- 
ways cross and recross upon the cortex of the 
brain. And just as two railways at their junc- 
tion, discharge passengers from one to the other, 
so do these crossing paths influence one another. 
Each idea travelling across its pathway awakens 
all other paths it touches. We call it the "power 
of suggestion" or "association. " An idea enters 
the brain, and in its progress to the deliberating 
centres it touches many other pathways. No idea 
ever enters apart from association with other ideas. 
The pathways cross and intertwine. Let one idea 
enter and with it come a host of others that its 
power awakens. Thus we tie a string on the finger 
to aid in remembering an errand. We are com- 
pelled to see the string, and when the idea is 
flashed across its pathway, it stirs to life the idea 
of the errand, which has been associated with it 
when the string was tied upon the finger. Asso- 
ciated paths have aided recall. 

"Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, 
Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; 
Awake but one, what myriads rise, 
Each stamps its image as the other flies. " 

What a wonderful thing is memory ! With her 
are hid the treasures of knowledge. "We can 
reason," said Plato, "because we can remember." 



CAN I FORGET THE PAST 111 

With her are the treasures of character. The 
memory of pain's punishments and virtue's re- 
wards ; the hopes and dreams and delights of child- 
hood's fresh young years, "when fond recollection 
presents them to view," put before the soul a gal- 
lery of pictures, that stir the heart to better 
things. With her are the treasures of love. What 
if memory should fail and we were to live in a 
world of strangers? There can be no love apart 
from memory. 

"As the dew upon the blossom, 
As the bud unto the bee, 
As the perfume to the rose, 
Are love's memories to me/' 

What then of him whose memories are soiled and 
sordid? He wants to forget! Is there hope for 
him to whom memory is a dreadful nightmare; 
whose recollections rise like taunting fiends to 
mock him with their hellish thoughts ? To him mem- 
ory is judgment. Remorse is memory tinged with 
bitterness. Remorse is hell. Can we get away 
from a wretched past, or are we destined to hear 
forever across a fixed gulf the words, "Son, re- 
member." Is there no escape, then, from the 
spectres of the past? 

"Come, psychologist, you have told us how to 
remember. Tell us how to forget ! Help us to 
get away from memories that are sad, and sordid, 
and stained !" 

"There is no way," he answers. "You cannot 
forget. The brain paths are worn, the associa- 



112 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

tions are formed. You cannot forget your past, 
nor get away from it. You may push it into the 
background for a while, and by persistent effort 
of the will, hold other things to the centre of the 
stage, but the past is lurking like a wolf to rush 
upon you the moment you relax your vigilance. 
You may put memory to sleep with opiates, but it 
will awake with renewed violence." "The drunken 
Rip Van Winkle in Jefferson's play excuses him- 
self for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't 
count this time.' He may not count it, and a kind 
heaven may not count it, but it is being counted, 
none the less. Down among his nerve cells and 
fibres, the molecules are counting it, registering 
and storing it up to be used against him when the 
next temptation comes." 

The law of Karma is written on every page of 
nature, "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he 
also reap." 

"Sow a thought, you reap an act; 
Sow an act, you reap a habit; 
Sow a habit, you reap a character; 
Sow a character, you reap a destiny." 

"There is no magic that can change tares into 
wheat." 

"The tissues of the life to be, 
We weave with colors all our own ; 
And in the field of destiny 
We reap as we have sown." 

The evil thoughts and deeds of long ago must 



CAN I FORGET THE PAST 118 

have their harvest in a bitter memory. There is 
no grace in nature. 

"As the tree falls so must it lie; 
As a man lives so must he die." 

We cannot dissever ourselves from the past. 
What's done is done and done forever. We can 
drive nails into a clean, white board and pull them 
out again. But we cannot pull the nail holes 
out! 

Is there, then, no hope for him who wants to 
close the book of the past and never open it again ? 
Is there no gospel for him who wants to forget? 

Well, here is one such — a woman, an adulteress, 
taken in the very act of her sin. What shall be 
done with her? According to the laws of Moses, 
she should be stoned. There is no forgetting a 
sin like that. But her captors have brought her to 
Jesus. "Here she is, Master, taken in the very 
act. What shall we do with her." No reply. 
They are insistent! "Let him that is without sin 
among you cast at her the first stone." Silently 
the accusers flee. The stones are not thrown. 
"Woman, hath no man condemned thee?" "None, 
Lord." "Neither do I condemn thee. Go, 
sin no more!" 

What a startling sentence ! Is Jesus approving 
adultery? No. But he is rising to the assertion 
of a law higher than civil law, beyond the natural 
law of Karma — a law that transcends all other 
laws — the law of spiritual rebirth. This 



114 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

woman can forget her past. God can forget it. 
"I will blot out thy transgressions and remember 
them no more against thee." "I will put a new 
heart and right spirit within thee." This adulter- 
ess can be a new creature. She can start life all 
over again. She can close the book of memory, 
with its haunting nightmare of remorse, and open 
it to a new, clean page. 

With Paul it is the same. He has a horrible 
past. The blood of martyrs stains his hands. His 
life is filled with wretched memories. What will 
he do? "This one thing I do. Forgetting those 
things which are behind, — I press on." He is 
going to treat his past like a closed book, never 
more to be opened. 

Can he do it? Can this sinful woman do it? 
Evidently Jesus thought so. "Go and sin no 
more !" "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest, but 
rise and go into the city, and it shall be told thee 
what thou must do." When this adulteress went 
out from Jesus' presence, she went forth into the 
rosy dawn of a new day. The mystic waters of 
God's Lethe flowed through her soul. She forgot 
her sin, and forgetting it she began a new life, 
freed from the shackles of her past. Saul, the 
proud, vengeful persecutor, is transformed into 
Paul, the meek, loving apostle. 

Whatever the laws of psychology may decree 
for these, there is higher spiritual law that tran- 
scends them — the law of a New Birth. The old 
being with its sordid memories may not forget. 



CAN I FORGET THE PAST 115 

But the "new creature" can forget. To say that 
one can never get away from memories of a 
wretched past, and that he is condemned to live 
forever by nature's laws, in the remorse those 
memories bring, is to ignore the greatest law of 
God — the law of Spiritual Rebirth. There is a 
divine psychology that eradicates the past, and 
puts new life, new manhood, new womanhood into 
the whole being. There is a process whereby men 
are born again into a new being — a new creature- 
hood. 

We do not understand the marvellous workings 
of this law. We are asking with Nicodemus, "How 
can a man be born when he is old?" How can God 
so change a man that he can forget his past, and 
be a new man through and through? Jesus was 
very frank to say that it was a mystery, but he 
was just as surprised to find that Nicodemus had 
not observed its reality. 

He drew a very simple figure from nature to 
show Nicodemus a startling parallel. "The wind 
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice 
thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh nor 
whither it goeth ; so is every one that is born of the 
Spirit." The wind is invisible, but its reality un- 
doubted. Its effects are seen. So is this marvellous 
new Birth. Though little understood, its marvel- 
lous effects are seen in the millions of "twice born" 
men that walk the ways of earth in newness of life 
— new creatures. 

Can the "wicked turn from his way" and walk 



116 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

again the ways of Godliness and purity? Can he 
forget the past ? Can the crawling worm ever rise 
to a higher life and bury the past? Apparently 
not, for behold him burying himself in a tiny 
casket, still a worm. But wait. It is Easter morn- 
ing now. Out of that casket he comes, a beautiful 
fluttering moth, winged, soaring creature. He has 
been born again ! Why is it deemed incredible 
that God who can change the worm into the "Poly- 
phemus" moth can give to man a new life un- 
shackled by the fetters of the past. If Luther 
Burbank can take the garden weeds and transform 
them into things of exquisite beauty; if he can 
take the poisonous fruits and make them sweet and 
good for food, why cannot God take the ugly and 
sin-cursed memory and turn it into a thing of 
beauty and purity? "Behold, I make all things 
new." 

If Nature knows no way of erasing a stained 
memory, God does. It is His constant word to for- 
get the past and press forward to better things. 
The sole condition of entrance into larger and 
better life is to forget the past. When Jesus said 
to the sinful woman, "Go, sin no more," he saw 
that it was possible for her to possess the new life. 
Her past did not concern him. He forgot it. And 
he bade her forget it, because it was the condition 
of putting on the new being. To others he said, 
"Except ye be converted and become as little chil- 
dren ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of 
Heaven." What he meant was that men must turn 



CAN I FORGET THE PAST 117 

their backs on the past — forget it — and let God 
blot out the memory of it all, before they could 
enter the highest happiness. It is a sign of worthi- 
ness to forget the past. It is an unmanly peni- 
tence that broods on a sin that God is ready to 
forget. It is lack of faith, not to take Him at his 
word and enter the full possibilities of a new life 
unhampered by recollection of an evil past. It is 
common sense to forget the past. 

"Ah !" someone says, "all this is true. But how 
shall I start this process of forgetting? I would 
be born again and forget the past. How may I 
do it? What impulse is there that can start me 
away from the past forever into the way of better 
things?" 

Behold then, Paul. He is journeying down to 
Damascus. He is a persecutor of the church. As 
he goes, he breathes out threatenings. He is proud, 
arrogant, a Pharisee. But he is not happy. The 
memory of the past is on him. He sees the dying 
face of Stephen and the stain of martyrs' blood is 
on his hands. He is a stubborn sinner. Then at 
midday a blinding light envelops him. He falls 
to the earth, trembling. Then for an instant he 
lifts his face up into heaven. He rises to forever 
"forget those things which are behind," and to 
"press on toward the mark for the prize of his 
high calling." What has transformed him? He 
has seen the face of Jesus! 

Here is a woman grovelling in the dust. Hope- 
less, sinful, dreadful memories are torturing her 



118 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

soul. Impurity has covered her with its filth. She 
has been caught in her sin, and the law says she 
must die. Then suddenly a new resolve, a new 
hope, a new life, thrills through her being. She 
rises to go and sin no more. What has happened? 
Why, as she kneels there in the dust, she has cast 
her eyes upward, and has seen in the face of this 
Rabbi something that transforms her. Here is 
one who believes in her, and in her possibility of 
better things. Her soul reaches out to his, and 
lo, she is born again. She has seen the face of 
Jesus! 

This is the way of forgetting, for it is the way 
of new birth. "Except one be born anew, he can- 
not see the Kingdom of God." There is but one 
way to forget the past. It is to be born into a 
new life that does not know the old. The begin- 
ning of forgetting the past is in a look into the 
glory of the better life as it shines in the face of 
Jesus. "I, if I be lifted up will draw all men unto 
me." 

Before every man there is the possibility of a 
new and blessed life. We can forget. It is God's 
counsel that we do forget. It is Christ's mission 
to make us forget the sin of the past, and to lead 
us into a life unstained by sordid memories of days 
that are dead. 

With God "the best of life is yet to be." Grand 
possibilities are before even the worst of men. Let 
us rise and leave the dead past to bury its dead 
and face the glorious dawn of a new day in the 
Kingdom of God. 



CAN I FORGET THE PAST 119 

"Forward ! be the watchword, 
Steps and voices joined, 
Seek the things before us, 

Leave the past behind. 
Burns the fiery pillar, 
At our army's head; 
Who shall dream of failure 
By Jehovah led. 

Forward from the desert 

Through the toil and fight, 
Jordan flows before us, 
Zion beams with light/' 



IX 
WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 



"It is a very significant thing that Christ spent 
the greater part of His ministry explaining at length 
and in detail the nature of our earthly duties. . . . 
Never was there a great teacher who was so intensely 
practical, who dwelt closer to the concrete and pal- 
pable, and paid less attention to those metaphysical 
abstractions in which the subtlety of the human mind 
delights, and has always delighted. . . . But it 
is curious to observe how completely Christ's follow- 
ers have reversed this process. That which has most 
completely fascinated the thinkers of Christianity is 
precisely those metaphysics of theology of which 
Christ himself said so little. " 
William J. Dawson, "The Reproach of Christ." 

"Jesus commands respect when He insists on a 
present Kingdom of God. It is not going to be, it is 
now and here. When Jesus said The Kingdom of 
Heaven, be sure He did not mean an unseen refuge 
whither a handful might one day escape, like perse- 
cuted and disheartened Puritans, fleeing from a hope- 
less England, but He intended that it might be and 
then was in Galilee, what should be and now is in 
England. 'To those who speak of heaven and seek 
to separate it from earth/ wrote Mazzini, 'you will 
say that heaven and earth are one, even as the way 
and the goal are one.' 

"Jesus laid himself alongside a sinful people, and 
out of them He slowly built up a new Kingdom. If 
a man was a formalist, he must be born again; if the 
slave of riches, he must sell all he had ; if in the toils 
of a darling sin, he must pluck out his right eye to 
enter the Kingdom of God. New men to make a new 
state. The kingdom was humility, purity, generosity, 
unselfishness. It was the reign of character; it was 
the struggle for perfection. Chunder Sen, the Indian 
prophet, described Jesus' Kingdom perfectly: 'A 
spiritual congregation of souls born anew to God/ w 
Ian Maclaren, Condensed from "The Mind of the 
Master" 



WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED? 

// any man be in Christ he is a new creature; 
old things are passed away; behold all things are be- 
come new. Second Corinthians 5:17. 

Jesus answered and said unto him, " Verily, verily, 
I say unto thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot 
see the Kingdom of God.' 3 John 3: S. 

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about 
what it means to be saved. I used to think, when 
a boy, that it was a terrible thing to be saved. 
For when I heard men say, "Are you saved?" it 
brought to my mind dreadful experiences I had 
heard men speak of in testimony meeting. Of fire 
falling from heaven and burning out their hearts, 
of awful wrestlings and groanings, of sinners being 
led up at last to a mercy seat that was not a mercy 
seat at all, but the throne of a vindictive judge, 
who lashed and beat his victims along a thorny, 
tearful highway, called "this vale of tears." And 
in it all the goal of peace and happiness seemed so 
far away, and so painfully won as to make even 
the possession of it undesirable. 

I went to some revival meetings. An evangelist 
came to me and told me I was going to hell, that 
I might die that night, and wake up in a place of 
fire and brimstone, if I didn't come up to the altar 
and be "saved." I wondered what he meant by 
"being saved." Could it be some terrible torture 
I must endure whereby I was to escape the agonies 

123 



124 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

of hell? I concluded so from the agonizing cries 
I heard of the few kneeling ones at the altar. 

I didn't want to go to hell, and so with another 
boy I went to the "mourner's bench." The evange- 
list came to me and in sepulchral tones bade me 
pray. I thought of the prayer I said each night. 
But "now I lay me down to sleep" did not seem 
appropiate. "What shall I pray?" I asked. "Say," 
said he, "God be merciful to me a wretched sin- 
ner." I said it. "Now, don't you feel better?" he 
asked. I could not say that I did ; I had not felt 
bad any of the time. So he had me say it again. 
There was no change. "I am afraid," said he, 
"you are a bad boy, but I trust God will be merci- 
ful." 

God was merciful. He gave me loved ones who 
led me, step by step, at last into the service of 
God, and taught me the loving ways of His King- 
dom. 

I have told this experience, not because it is 
unique, but because it is very common. It illus- 
trates the very hazy ideas men have of what it 
means to be saved. I do not deny that such ex- 
periences are not real, and that many men suffer 
great agony when they turn from sin to Christ. 
If a man has been walking a lifetime with his face 
away from God, and a thousand devils within are 
beckoning him into the realms of darkness, of 
course it costs effort and pain to turn himself 
square about. But this is not the process of salva- 
tion at all. It is conversion — turning one's self 



WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED 125 

around. There are two long words on which most 
men stumble — conversion and salvation. 

Conversion is the act of turning around to face 
God. If a man is headed for the north pole and 
wants to go to the sunny land of Florida, he must, 
first of all, turn around. If one is headed for the 
cold glaciers of sin's frozen clime, and wants to 
get into the summerland of God's presence, the 
first thing he must do is to turn around. A man 
converts himself. He simply answers the call of 
God to his heart, "Come, follow me ;" by turning 
squarely around and saying, "By thy help, O 
Christ, I will follow thee." 

Is he then a saved man? Not a bit of it. He 
has simply begun the process of salvation. Now 
God takes him into His care. He first of all for- 
gives him his former wandering, "blots out his 
transgression and remembers it no more against 
him." But he is not a saved man. Old habits 
cling to him, old temptations assail him, old 
troubles molest him. He is not a saved man. He 
is a changed man. He will not fully be saved 
until he has put sin forever behind him. Peter 
leaves all and follows his Lord, but Peter is not 
yet a saved man. When the cock crows, he will 
deny his Lord. It will be a long process before 
Peter can call himself a saved man. Salvation is 
not crossing a fire escape from hell to heaven. It 
is not covering a black heart with alabaster and 
entering a fool's paradise. It is a cure, a process, 
of transformation, whereby the soul of man is made 



126 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

into a new creature. God is still creating. And 
his choicest creatures are souls that bear his image. 
If we are to follow the analogy of nature, God will 
not make saved men in a day. He will start them 
on the path of salvation in an instant, but the 
process of salvation is the gradual lifting of the 
soul into "the stature and image of Christ" — the 
process of evolution, if you please. 

Salvation does not mean an escape to a far off 
place of happiness, which one may win in the last 
moment of his life by any form of confession or 
unction of holy oil. Heaven is not a far off refuge 
whither a few ascetic souls shall flee some day. 
Hell is not a gaol, from which one may escape, by 
simply kneeling at an altar or bowing in a con- 
fessional. 

Salvation means becoming a new creature; put- 
ting off the ways of sin and the habiliments of 
evil, and putting on the character of God. 

It does not concern us as to just how God does 
this. It is a mystery. It is a spiritual process. 
Like the whistling wind, "we cannot tell whence 
it cometh nor whither it goeth." Like the birth 
of a child, the wonderful process that brings it to 
life is hidden. But it is real. We can "hear the 
sound thereof" and can see the "new creature." 

Nor does it concern us if men can enter, in this 
life, the fullness of that new creation. Some men 
claim to attain that condition they call "sanctifi- 
cation," perfect holiness. Let us not deny their 
experience. It is the end of salvation. But we 



WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED 127 

can all attain enough of it here, to assure us that 
it is real. And it is possible even in this sin- 
cursed world for men to become "new creatures." 
There are some who are distressed because they 
apparently never pass through that first step in 
salvation — conversion. They cannot look back 
and say, "On such and such a day I started this 
new life." Happy should such Christians be ! 
One has only to read Harold Begbie's "Twice 
Born Men," to convince him that no two men be- 
gin the life of God in the same way. To some it 
is an ever upward march from the cradle to the 
throne of glory. Theirs is a blessed experience. 

"When, passing southward, I may cross the line, 

Between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans; 
I may not tell by any tests of mine, 

By any startling signs nor strange commotions 
Across my track. 

But if the days grow sweeter, one by one, 
And e'en the icebergs melt their hardened faces, 

And sailors linger, basking in the sun, 
I know I must have made the change of places 
Some distance back. 

When, answering timidly the Master's call, 

I passed the bourne of life in coming to Him, 
When in my love for Him I gave up all, 

The very moment when I thought I knew Him 
I cannot tell. 

But, as unceasingly I feel His love, 
And this cold heart is melted to o'erflowing, 

As now, so clear the light comes from above, 
I wonder at the change, but move on, knowing 
That all is well. ,, 



128 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

No, some never know the experience of con- 
version. "Except ye be converted and become as 
little children," said Jesus. What he meant was, 
that the little ones before him had their faces 
turned toward the Father. Blessed little children, 
if they never turned them away — never had to be 
converted. 

But what then is .salvation? What does it mean 
to be a new creature? 

It means first of all, the possession of a New 
Mind. What we see in life depends on the mind 
we have. He was a wise man who said, "As a man 
thinketh in his heart, so is he." Last summer I 
fished among the woods of Northern Michigan. 
I had been there many times before. But now 
there was a companion with me, to whom the forest 
was an open book. With w T hat new wonders the 
old wooded hills and lakes thrilkd, as he pointed 
out their new glories, which I had passed with un- 
seeing eyes before. I was given a new mind. Sal- 
vation means the possession of a saved mind. God, 
the world and men are seen in a different light 
now. Altitude determines perspective. We are 
up on the mountain with God now. We see things 
with the mind of God. We have that "mind in us 
which was also in Christ Jesus," and the whole 
universe is altered. 

It means also the possession of a new will. 
Who has not felt the despondency that comes 
from a feeble will? We "will not yield to that 
temptation again." And lo, we have yielded be- 



WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED 129 

fore we know it. If we are to be victors, we must 
have a new will. God gives a new will. I watched 
an engineer the other day at his boilers. I saw 
him take some black lumps of lifeless coal and a 
few gallons of water. One he put beneath, and 
the other within some tubes of steel, and in a 
few moments he had generated a force that shook 
the building and turned a thousand wheels. If 
man can turn such dead things as steel and water 
and coal, into life and power, what cannot God 
do with the feeble will of man ? 

It means also the possession of a new affection. 
"Out of the heart are the issues of life." A man's 
desires, his feeling, his affections are changed. He 
loves now the highest and best things. In Mark 
Twain's "Prince and Pauper," chance at last puts 
a beggar boy on a throne; but he is not happy 
as a prince, for he has a beggar's heart. What 
we need above all is to have our "universe of de- 
sire" changed, not our universe of activity. "A 
new heart will I give thee, a new spirit will I put 
within thee." 

But best of all there is given a new dynamic, a 
new motive. No man can rise higher than the 
ideal that moves him, nor faster than the dynamic 
that drives him. I remember an old slow-going 
steamboat that used to come into the harbor when 
I was a boy. One day we missed it, and it was 
gone for several weeks. At last one day it came 
steaming up the lake, proudly showing its spray 
to all the other craft in the harbor. Everybody 



130 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

wondered what had happened to the "Joe." Some- 
one asked the captain. "Oh, nothing, boys," he 
said, "only I've got a new engine." To be saved 
is to get a new engine, a new motive power. "The 
love of Christ constraineth us." 

It will be readily seen from what I have said 
that the possession of a new mind, a new will, a 
new heart and a new ideal, means the possession 
of a new life. Have we been crawling like the 
worm? There is before us the possibility of a 
beautiful, free, winged, soaring life. 

Having a life like this here and now, there is 
no occasion to worry about future happiness. Hell 
will lose itself forever. The question of being 
saved is not how to get to heaven, but how to get 
heaven here. 

We are living, it is true, in a world far from 
heavenly. There is no lack of sin, and sorrow, and 
wrong. But from it all there is salvation. He 
who walked the path of our temptations without 
sin is able to save to the uttermost. He is here to 
save us, not from the penalty of sin, but from sin 
itself. "Thou shalt call his name "Jesus," for he 
shall save his people from their sins." 

I stood one evening on the rim of the Grand 
Canyon of the Colorado. Here before me, is an 
awful, yawning gulf, tossed, and torn and troubled 
in its chaos. Here with roar, and shock, and tu- 
mult in ages past the forces of nature have strug- 
gled for the mastery. But as the setting sun 
spreads its glow over granite wall, tortured cliff 



WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED 131 

and jagged pillar, a glorious beauty settles over 
all. It is as if I stand amid the minarets and 
towers of the City of God. I can but exclaim, 
"What hath God wrought?" 

And still He works, not on barren rocks which 
shall be lost in the crumbling of ages, but upon 
souls, human souls, scarred by the warfare of 
evil. And when at last, time's evening glow plays 
on the ruins of the far away past, that which has 
been scarred and torn will catch the lustre of 
jasper and of pearl, and there will be ushered 
into the Kingdom of Light, which is forever, a 
"new creature," the ransomed, redeemed, saved 
Child of God— Man. 

"So shall it be, that, when I stand 
On that next planet's ruddy-shimmering strand 
I shall not seem a pert and forward child 
Seeking to dabble in abstruser lore 
With alphabet unlearned, who in disgrace 
Returns, upon his primer yet to pore — 
But those examiners, all wise and mild, 
Shall gently lead me to my place, 
As one that faithfully did trace 
These simpler earthly lessons o'er and o'er." 



X 
WHAT ABOUT OUR SINS? 



"The germs of all things are in every heart, and 
the greatest criminals as well as the greatest heroes 
are but different modes of ourselves/' 

Amiel, "Journal" 

"Christianity is a religion of redemption. Jesus 
was not a reformer, but a Redeemer. His first ap- 
peal is not to the conversation, but to the conscience. 
He was manifested to take away sin, the guilt of it, 
the power of it, the love of it. Thoreau, when asked 
if he had made his peace with God, replied, "I have 
never quarrelled with Him." And Heinrich Heine 
on his mattress grave, as he called it, and in the very 
moment of a very painful passing, said, "God will 
forgive, that's His business." But how flippant are 
such words. "Not quarrelled with God." "God will 
forgive me, that's His business." Yes, He will, but 
can He without the cross? "It behooved Christ to 
suffer." The cross is the very centre and core of 
the Christian's faith. A gospel without a cross is an 
impotent gospel! The cross is like the sword of Ex- 
calibur in the Arthurian legend. It could not only 
wound, but being laid on the wound could heal. The 
cross makes sin known, but it also makes Him known 
who takes away sin." 

Malcolm J. McLeod, "A Comfortable Faith" 



WHAT ABOUT OUR SINS? 

We have all sinned and come short of the glory 
of God. Romans 3 : 23. 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten son that whosoever believeth on him should 
not perish, but have eternal life. John 3: 16. 

The pathos of humanity's history is its sin. 
It is the one universal problem. "A serpent is 
crawling across God's fair creation." The devil's 
shadow blackens every Eden. There is a blight 
on every flower, and a blind spot in every eye. 
The rivers of evil run underground, but they 
break forth in polluting fountains everywhere. 

No question holds us with such weird fascina- 
tion as the question of human sin. Whence came 
sin? Why is it permitted to mar a world of such 
beauty as ours? How did it get into the uni- 
verse? What will the end of it be? How far is 
man responsible for his sin? 

These are questions before which the human 
heart is dumb. There have been many daring 
guesses and shrewd speculations to answer these 
questions, but they are as dark a mystery as 
ever. Homer takes us to the lower world, and 
there we see the spectre forms of departed spirits. 
Ixion is there, bound to his whirling wheel. Sisy- 
phus is there, rolling his rock up the long hill- 
side, only to see it roll back again. And he must 
do this forever. Tantalus stands in a river of 
pure water, but the waters recede before his 

135 



136 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

thirsty lips. Rich fruits quiver on the branches 
before him, but as he reaches for them they are 
snatched away. 

"There Tantalus, along the Stygian bound, 
Pours out deep groans, — his groans through hell 

resound. 
Even 'mid encircling food refreshment craves, 
And pines with thirst amid a sea of waves." 

Why are these men suffering here? They have 
sinned! Ixion has defied the Gods and tried to 
make thunder of his own. Sisyphus has made 
himself the equal of Jupiter. Tantalus has pried 
open the secret council chamber of the gods. 
Through all ancient literature sin is the black 
thread in the golden fabric of men's dreams. It 
is thus today. It has always been. 

We cannot pluck the heart out of all the mys- 
teries that surround it, but the ever recurring 
question, "What about my sin?" can have an an- 
swer that satisfies. There are four vantage points 
from which we may view the problem of our sin. 
Is sin real? Is it mighty? What are its conse- 
quences? Can it be forgiven? 

Sin's presence, sin's power, sin's punishment, 
sin's pardon. 

I. Sin's Presence. 

We cannot touch this question without discov- 
ering first of all that we have touched a real king- 
dom. Sin is everywhere. No heathen land, how- 
ever low, without its altars. No savage so de- 
graded that the problem of expiation is not ever 



WHAT ABOUT OUR SINS 137 

before him. No culture so high, that the dread in- 
truder has not entered. Hindus are crawling 
through the swamps of India to the Ganges ; 
mothers are throwing their babies to the croco- 
diles of the Nile, the prophets of Baal are cutting 
themselves with knives and Buddhists are turning 
endless prayer wheels, and they are all crying, 
"God be merciful to me a sinner." "We have all 
sinned and come short of the glory of God." 

Nowhere was sin's awful presence so realized 
as among the Jews. They had a grand concep- 
tion of God, and it led them to a true conception 
of sin's terrible reality. The prophets, the psalm- 
ists, the priests, all echo the deep sense of sin's 
reality. "Woe is me for I am undone; I am a 
man of unclean lips," cries Isaiah. "Have mercy 
upon me, O God; blot out my transgressions. 
Wash me from mine iniquity, for my sin is ever 
before me. Against thee and thee only have I 
sinned." The man who wrote that realized the 
awful presence of sin. How deeply he sank in 
sin! See him, the aged David, 

"So fallen ! So lost ! The light withdrawn which once 
he wore, 
The glory from his grey hairs gone forevermore. ,, 

And all through the Bible there is that same 
picture of sin's reality. "There is not one right- 
eous, no not one." "If we say we have no sin we 
deceive ourselves." 

A man and woman are fleeing from Paradise. 



138 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

They have sinned. A flood covers the earth. "The 
thoughts of men's hearts are only evil all the day." 
Cain is a wanderer and a fugitive. He has sinned. 
Israel is lost, forty years in a desert. Israel has 
sinned. Judas hangs himself on a tree. Judas 
has "betrayed innocent blood." Ananias falls 
dead. Ananias is a liar. 

The pages of the Old Testament are bathed in 
blood. Blood is the expiation of sin. The Bible 
confirms what human hearts bear witness to in 
human history. Man is a fallen creation, a sin- 
ner. 

"Like some ill-guided bark, well-built and tall, 
Which angry tides cast on a desert shore, 
And then retiring leave it there to rot 
And moulder in the winds and rains of heaven. 
So he, cut from the sympathies of life, 
And cast ashore from pleasure's boist'rous surge, 
A wandering, weary, worn, and wretched thing, 
A scorched and desolate and blasted soul, — 
A gloomy wilderness of dying, that 
Repined and groaned and withered from the earth." 

Sin is real. Belshazzar "and a thousand of his 
lords" are in the festal hall. No thought of dan- 
ger is on them. But of a sudden their faces are 
blanched with terror. On the wall has appeared 
a hand writing the fateful words, "Mene, mene, 
tekel, upharsin." David sits upon his throne, 
secure in assumed innocence. He has soothed his 
conscience with a lie. But the prophet appears 
before him. "Thou art the man!" Sin may be 



WHAT ABOUT OUR SINS 139 

hidden, but it is real. Some day frivolity will 
make itself known in a wasted life. Some day the 
cancer of greed will eat its way to the surface. 
Some day selfishness and animalism and hate and 
impurity will come to their own and men will see 
sin as it really is. 

"My sins, my sins — 
Wild beasts that crouch around my door. 
Dread vermin filling up my dwelling's walls, 
And crawling o'er my cabin floor. 
O hateful sin — 
Away, and let me see thy face no more!" 

II. Sin's Power. 

It follows from sin's universal presence that it 
must be a thing of terrible power. Its black flag 
waves triumphantly over countless battlefields. 
Sin has armed himself with all the weapons of 
war, and no feeble hand can resist his power. An 
old knight's tombstone bears this inscription: 

"Here lies a soldier whom all must applaud. 
He fought many battles at home and abroad; 
But the hottest engagement he ever was in, 
Was the conquest of self in the battle with sin.'' 

Here is man's most trying battle. Sin's power 
is far reaching. It has touched every part of our 
being. Our minds, our emotions, our wills, our 
bodies, have all felt the sting of the serpent. We 
are totally depraved! This does not mean we 
are as bad as we can be. "Pravo" means "up- 
right, erect." Depraved means "turned down 



140 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

from the upright." Total depravity means 
"turned down from the upright" in the whole na- 
ture. What wonderful power is this, to turn aside 
the aggressive, aspiring soul of man and leave it 
lying like a fallen monarch of the forest. 

But sin's power thus to turn down is not con- 
fined to outward acts. Sin may be an act. But 
it is also a state of being. A life does not need 
to perform an overt act of sin to be a sinful life. 
We belong to a race of sinners. Sin's poison is 
in our blood. We are carrying our cradles on 
our backs. A stream of sinful tendencies is flow- 
ing through us. Sin is a part of our nature. It 
is Paul who says, "That which I would, I do not; 
and that which I would not, I do. O, wretched 
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death." What awful power is this which 
fastens its clutches on us, in the womb and the 
cradle. 

Terrible is its power ! 

It is a withering power. "As an oak whose 
leaf fadeth." Behold us men ! See our weak 
bodies, dulled brains and impotent wills. Blasted 
trees in the forest. Sin sears and dries the heart, 
stifles the bloom and freshness of life, and leaves 
it a withered leaf. 

It is a consuming power. "He shall be as tow, 
and his work as a spark and they shall burn to- 
gether." Sin at last wrecks the fair promises of 
manhood. It burns out the finest fibre of life and 
leaves a scarred ruin. It makes the soul inflam- 
mable and compels it to feed upon ashes. 



WHAT ABOUT OUR SINS 141 

"On that hard pagan world 
Disgust and secret loathing fell; 
Deep weariness and sated lust 
Made human life a hell/' 

No need is there for Gehenna with its fires. Sin 
itself withers and burns, and leaves man — im- 
perial, immortal man — a charred ruin amid the 
wreckage of time. "The wages of sin is death." 

What awful power is this which has power to 
"destroy both soul and body" of the fairest crea- 
ture of God's creation ! 

III. Sin's Punishment. 

Man is not a puny weakling. He is grandly 
free. Sin is a choice. For his choices man is 
responsible. Is he then, punished for the evil that 
he deliberately embraces? We know he is pun- 
ished here. Nature punishes him. The drunk- 
ard's woe, the miser's fear and the libertine's dis- 
gust are familiar pictures of sin's punishments. 
Pain and disease may be numbered among them. 
Remorse is sin's most common retribution. Yes, 
sin is punished, and punished terribly here. And 
our sense of justice tells us it ought to be so. 

But does punishment exhaust itself on this side 
of the grave? There is a great deal of confusion 
about the doctrine of Hell. Most of us get our 
conception of it from the poets. Dante, and Mil- 
ton, and Homer, and Bunyan are our authorities. 
It is not strange that we have a distorted picture. 
For these poets have shown us a crude and impos- 
sible picture of spiritual beings suffering physical 



142 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

torments in a place of fire and brimstone. They 
are a travesty on the gospel, and a libel on God. 
And yet men have the idea that these are the sole 
argument of the evangelist. 

Jesus does not say much of hell, but he de- 
clares again and again that sin is punished be- 
yond the grave. There are some sins that cannot 
reap their full harvest here. Vanity, frivolity, 
envy, greed, hate, cruelty, selfishness, irreverence 
do not come to their full fruitage till the externals 
of the flesh are stripped away. Dives had a stony 
heart in life, but when death has burned his linen 
and his banquet table, and he stands, a soul — 
then he sees himself as he really is. And remorse, 
awful remorse, burning him like a consuming 
flame, causes him to cry out in agony for a drop 
of water to cool his thirst. But the same death 
cleansed the sores of Lazarus and burned his rags, 
and he, too, stands out alone as he is. He is in 
heaven. His soul is in the "bosom of Abraham." 
He has lived the life of God. 

How long will the spiritual punishment of re- 
morse, separation from the good, and the absence 
of spiritual joy, endure? "Eternal," said Jesus. 
"Age-long." Ah, but how long ere the age is 
consummated? Will it last forever? "Do you 
mean to say God will send man to everlasting pun- 
ishment for the sins committed in one short life?" 
No, the Bible does not say that. It does not even 
say God sends any man into hell. If he goes 
there, he walks through its dreary portals of his 



WHAT ABOUT OUR SINS 143 

own volition, turning his back upon the Father. 
There must be separation in a perfect Kingdom, 
The evil cannot live with the good. But if a man 
is punished forever it will be because he is a sin- 
ner forever. And it seems as if it were possible 
to resist the love of God forever. So far as we 
know, death crystallizes character. Behold, men 
resisting to the last the entreaties of a loving God, 
and going out into the dark night with curses on 
their lips. Who shall say that they may not thus 
live forever? 

There is an air of finality about Jesus' word on 
future punishment. The gulf is fixed. The tares 
are separated from the wheat. Men are left, pass- 
ing into outer darkness. Nothing is said of their 
return. To say that some souls may choose hell 
so long, that they can never get back to the 
Father's house, is neither preposterous nor fool- 
ish. "He that is filthy let him be filthy still, and 
he that is holy let him be holy still." The best 
psychology of today plainly declares that there 
comes a time when habits become so fixed, and 
character so crystallized that a change is impos- 
sible. Who shall say, that for some evil hearts, 
that very time does not come, when the last flut- 
ter of the eyelid tells that earthly life is ended. 
There is a sin that is not forgiven — the sin against 
the Holy Ghost. It is the sin of spiritual suicide. 
The soul is killed. It can no longer hear the call 
of God. It can never turn. Its punishment is 
forever. Its sin is forever. 



144 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

IV. Sin's Pardon. 

Is there then no hope for man, stung by the 
presence of sin, slave to its power, burdened by 
its punishments? 

Here upon the earth two pillars rise. One is 
built of human sufferings, sorrows, woes and sins. 
Its capstone is a yearning desire for deliverance. 
The other is built of holiness, purity, peace, wis- 
dom, power; and its capstone is the infinite Love 
of God. These two pillars are stretching out 
their unfinished arms. Will they ever meet? Is 
forgiveness possible? 

Here is man, a depraved creature, feebly grop- 
ing his way among the dark spectres of his in- 
tended glory, passing out into the gloom of night 
and sending back the echoes of his retreating 
cry, "What must I do to be saved?" 

Has Infinite Love an answer? Is "God sitting 
in his heaven and doing nothing?" Is humanity's 
experience to end in a tragedy? God has an an- 
swer: "For God so loved the world that He gave 
His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
on him should not perish, but have eternal life." 
God has not forgotten. There is pardon and sal- 
vation. The unfinished arch has a capstone. 

It is from God. "For God so loved." We 
know God can think. A reverent astronomer 
says, "Oh, God, I am thinking thy thoughts after 
thee." We know God loves. We are accustomed 
to say, "God is love." Can He "so" love as to 
forgive and redeem? Can He make the sacrifices 



WHAT ABOUT OUR SINS 145 

necessary to bring back the child from the far 
country? True forgiveness never is cheap. It 
will cost God sacrifice to convince, to forgive man, 
and save him. Will He make the sacrifice? 

Suppose a mother, as she sits by her fireside, 
should hear in the storm without, the voice of her 
child lamenting. What would be the impulse of 
such a mother's heart? Would it not be to leave 
the fireside and its comfort and to go out and 
bring the wanderer home? And if love be the 
same in quality through all its degrees, why deem 
it a marvel that God should go out to seek the 
prodigal that has despised Him? Mighty is the 
mother love of God. "Come down from the cross ; 
save thyself," shouted the priests at Calvary. But 
Jesus cannot come down from the cross. Jesus 
cannot save himself. When has love ever been 
able to save itself? It "suffereth long." It "layeth 
down its life for its friends." God "so" loved the 
world. There is a depth of meaning in that word 
"so." It is the grandest word, in the grandest 
sentence of the Bible. Because forgiveness is free 
to man it is not therefore cheap "Ye are bought 
with a price." 

What shall the price be? What is always the 
sacrifice involved in forgiveness? When man for- 
gives his brother, what sacrifice does he make? 
Is it not the giving up of self? Is it not the 
yielding of life? The boldest word in all litera- 
ture is this which declares that God will send "His 
only begotten Son." He had sent prophets and 



146 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

saints and priests, and all had failed to rouse man 
from the lethargy of sin. 

Now the Son comes. The first great sacrifice 
is the Incarnation. Love — even Infinite love must 
lower itself to the object of its desire if it is to 
save. In uplifting it must get underneath. So 
Jesus identifies Himself with men, as their cham- 
pion against sin. He offers the glad forgiveness 
of God. He faces every temptation men have to 
face, and is the supreme Victor, spotless, unique, 
alone. But still the miracle of forgiveness is not 
complete. Men's hearts are not touched. It is 
not until upon a cross he says, "Father forgive 
them," that he "draws all men unto Him." 

The cross is the end of sacrifice. It is God's 
final gift that has led men to say, "Father forgive 
me." One of the earliest pictures of the nativity 
represents the babe lying in the manger, and just 
above Him on the wall of the stable is the shadow 
of a cross. Holman Hunt paints Him in the car- 
penter's shop. The day's toil is over; the tired 
toiler, lifts his arms in weariness, and the level 
rays of the sun cast upon the wall yonder the 
shadow of a cross. The shadow of the cross was 
ever before Jesus. Even in the days of his high- 
est popularity he knew what adherence to his mis- 
sion of forgiveness and redemption would bring, 
and he said, "The Son of Man must be lifted 
up." 

One painting of the crucifixion represents a 
group of angels hovering over the cross, and one 



WHAT ABOUT OUR SINS 147 

of them in wonder is reaching down to touch with 
his fingers the thorn points on the crown of mock- 
ery. Well may he wonder! 

For never was there love like this. It is the 
sacrifice of God for man's forgiveness and re- 
demption. 

"When I survey the wondrous cross, 

On which the Prince of Glory died, 
My richest gain I count but loss, 

And pour contempt on all my pride." 

And this forgiveness is for me. This sacrifice 
is to redeem me. Luther caught its deep signifi- 
cance, when in his dying hour, he held the crucifix 
before his dimming eyes and whispered, "Fur 
mich, fur mich." 

"There is a green hill far away 

Without a city wall, 
Where the dear Lord was crucified, 

Who died to save us all. 
We may not know, we cannot tell, 

What pains he had to bear, 
But this we know, it was for us, 

He hung and suffered there." 

It will be said that this is old-fashioned. It is. 
Let us not despise old-fashioned things. The old- 
fashioned sun is shining in the heavens, the old- 
fashioned rain is falling upon the earth, the old- 
fashioned stars still deck the canopy of the night, 
the old-fashioned flowers are blooming in the 
meadows, the old-fashioned grass still grows on 



148 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

the hillsides, old-fashioned love still stirs the hearts 
of men. The old-fashioned cross still saves. 

To the toiler in sin's dark valley, weary and 
heavy laden, the message of hope is sounded. 

Struggle upward — onward! The cross is 
reared upon the Alpine summits of life. And 
standing beneath it, one gazes far out over the 
flowered fields of heaven's sunny Italy. 

"Is the way so dark, O wanderer? 
Is the hill crest wild and steep? 
Far, so far the goal beyond thee, 

Where the home-lights, vigil keep? 

From the toiling, from the striving, 
There at last shall come release; 

One shall bring thee past the hill crest, 
Home unto His plains of peace. ,, 



XI 

HOW NEAR MAY I COME TO HEAVEN 

AND MISS IT? 



"Eye hath not seen it, my gentle boy, 
Ear hath not heard its sweet sounds of joy; 
Dreams cannot picture a world so fair, 
Sorrow and death may not enter there. 
Time doth not breathe on its fadeless bloom, 
For beyond the grave and beyond the tomb 
It is there, it is there, my child. " 

Felicia Hemans, "The Better Land." 

"Not every one that saith unto me, 'Lord, Lord,' 
shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that 
doeth the will of my Father who is in Heaven/ ' 
"The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." "Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, Except ye turn, and become 
as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the 
Kingdom of Heaven." "Whosoever therefore shall 
humble himself as a little child, the same is greatest 
in the Kingdom of Heaven." 

Jesus, to His hearers. 



HOW NEAR MAY I COME TO HEAVEN 
AND MISS IT? 

Thou art not far from the Kingdom of God. 
Mark 12:34. 

"How near may I come to Heaven and miss 
it?" 

"Ah," but some one says, "I do not believe in 
Heaven." Oh, yes, you do. You may not believe 
in a city paved with golden streets, thronged 
with winged angels, resounding with the melodies 
of golden harps, and redolent with the perfume 
of blossoming flowers, far beyond the starry sky. 
But you believe in Heaven just the same. 

You may not even believe in a better life of the 
spirit, after this house of clay shall have fallen 
back into the bosom of the earth. You may have 
no hopes beyond the narrow boundaries of this 
three score years and ten. But you believe that 
somehow, somewhere there is such a thing as per- 
fect Justice. You believe that there is such a 
thing as perfect Love, absolute Honesty and un- 
spotted Character. You believe that it is possible 
to be perfectly happy. The vision of better days 
is before you, and you are always longing for 
something which you think will bring you blessed 
joy. You believe in heaven. Heaven is 

"That something which still prompts the eternal sigh, 
For which we bear to live, or dare to die." 

There is a universal longing to enter a fuller 

151 



152 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

and richer life than earth in its present condition 
has to offer. All literature is full of this longing 
for that better land to which we give the name of 
"Heaven." It may express itself very low in the 
scale of desire: 

"A Persian heaven is easily made; 
'Tis but black eyes and lemonade. " 

Or it may rise to the lofty heights of most 
exalted communion with God. 

"Alone, O Love Ineffable, 
Thy saving Name is given, 
To turn aside from Thee is Hell, 
To walk with Thee is Heaven." 

But we tire of theories that try to speculate 
on the great question, "Where and what is 
Heaven?" For, after all, the question is not so 
much what and where it is, as how to get it for 
the soul. 

Jesus himself seldom used the word, but when 
he did he spoke in very simple language. He 
spoke of heaven as a Kingdom. There are three 
things that make a kingdom: A king, a subject 
and a law. Jesus also used the word "Kingdom 
of God." By it he meant the same thing as "The 
Kingdom of Heaven." The Kingdom of Heaven 
to His mind was a condition of life where God 
was King, where His children lived in obedient 
recognition of His laws. When this should have 
been accomplished heaven would come to every 
heart. The thing for which he told his disciples 



MISSING HEAVEN 153 

to pray above all was that Heaven's "Kingdom 
might come and God's will be done on earth," as 
it was in the very bosom of God Himself. 

He very frankly said that he had come to earth 
to set up the Kingdom of Heaven here, and that 
all who followed him would enter that state of 
blessed joy which they sought. "The Kingdom of 
Heaven," said he, "is within you." It is a con- 
dition of soul, which a man carries with him. It 
is a present reality, which one may enter here and 
now. It is not a far off refuge whither a handful 
will one day escape. It is a condition of soul that 
permits one to live today in the Paradise of God. 
Omar Kayam echoes Jesus' thought. 

"I sent my soul through the Invisible, 
Some letters of the after life to spell; 

And by and by my soul came back to me 
And whispered, "I myself am Heaven and Hell. ,, 

But Jesus did not stop there. While heaven's 
beginning is here, its end is not here. Jesus knew 
full well, that if the dream of the socialist should 
come true, and every child born into the world, 
should be clothed, fed, educated and well char- 
actered, there would still be an unsatisfied long- 
ing. An immortal spirit will not be content to 
live in a house of clay. To try to make all of 
heaven here, is to take no reckoning of the "awful 
soul that dwells within." To Jesus the Kingdom 
of Heaven was also a future prospect. Heaven 
here is the bud of a flower whose bloom is beyond 
the tomb. 



154 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what's a heaven for." 

"In my Father's house are many — (not man- 
sions) — but 'homes,' " said Jesus. "I go to pre- 
pare a place for you, that where I am ye may 
be also." The idea constantly in the mind of 
Jesus as he spoke to men who were longing for a 
heaven of temporal glories, was of a spiritual 
kingdom, here and hereafter where God should be 
King, and men should be His children, obeying 
His paternal laws. That Kingdom was a present 
reality. It was set up in the hearts of men. It 
was a future reality, where freed from the shackles 
of the flesh, the citizen would enter the full in- 
heritance of eternal spiritual joy and perfect 
being in the Paradise of God. 

The world has no simpler, saner teaching of 
heaven than this. If one believes in Jesus as the 
Great Teacher merely, he can ask for no grander 
conception of heaven than this ; abiding, eternal 
happiness forever ; satisfactions that never pass 
away, joys that have no end. This is the heaven 
for which we are all longing in our highest mo- 
ments. 

How near may we come to this, and yet miss it? 
I remember when a boy my teacher in spelling 
used to arrange the class in line before her, and 
when one spelled a word correctly, which the 
scholar before him had missed, he advanced one 
position toward the head of the class. The one 
who stood at the head of the class, when the day's 



MISSING HEAVEN 155 

lesson closed was given a point of credit, and the 
next day went to the foot to begin the climb again. 
At the close of the term a prize was given to the 
one having the most credits. It was my ambition 
to excel, and on the last day of the term it hap- 
pened to be my turn to stand at the head of the 
class. Next below was a girl companion. We 
were tied for the prize. If I could only hold my 
place for today! The first word was "receive." 
Before I thought I had spelled it with the "i" 
first. I knew it! But it was too late! "Next" 
had already sounded in my ears. I had just 
missed ! 

May it not be that for some this dream of 
heaven is to be just like that? Is it possible that 
we may walk up to the very portals of eternal 
happiness and then be robbed of it forever? Let 
us see. 

Here is Jesus talking to a curious throng gath- 
ered before him. He sees upon their faces a long- 
ing for a richer, fuller, more glorious life than 
that which they are living. Beneath their com- 
placent exterior he sees the deep hungering of 
their souls. 

At first glance it might seem that he has a hard 
audience to preach to. 

The Herodians are there. They are the par- 
tisans of King Herod. They are listening to 
Jesus for political reasons. If they can only en- 
trap Him into some statement that may be con- 
strued as a word of disloyalty to Caesar, they will 



156 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

have an excuse for doing away with him as a pos- 
sible pretender. 

The Pharisees are there. They are the relig- 
ious leaders of the Jews, and are studying scien- 
tifically and critically this new phenomenon in the 
religious world. 

The Sadducees are there. They are the liberals 
of their day; speculative philosophers, who hold 
a theory that there can be no resurrection of the 
dead. 

The scribes are there. They are the scholars of 
Israel, and have come to put this new teacher to 
the test of scholarship. 

Jesus is preaching to them the Kingdom of 
Heaven, for he knows that beneath the exterior 
cloaks of the names they wear, there is a deeper 
longing for the secret of blessedness. 

It is not strange that one of those learned 
scribes, perceiving how wonderfully Jesus had ap- 
prehended the truth, approaches him in an honest 
effort for more light. "Which is the first com- 
mandment of all?" Jesus replies giving him the 
two fundamental laws of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and thy 
neighbor as thyself." The scribe agrees. "In- 
deed, Master, thou hast spoke the truth." Jesus 
answers, "Oh, scribe, thou art not far from the 
Kingdom of God." 

The story ends. "So near and yet so far." 

This word of Jesus was a word of encourage- 



MISSING HEAVEN 157 

ment. Not far ! I remember reading last sum- 
mer of a workman at work on the lofty steel frame 
of a skyscraper. He was a riveter and it was his 
business to lie flat upon the iron beams, a hundred 
feet above the street and fasten the rivets to the 
steel girders. One day he was crawling out along 
a heavy timber, riveting it in place, when suddenly 
a heavy beam from above fell down with terrific 
force and crushed his feet. With the grip of 
death he hung to the beam and slowly crawled 
across it. His friends were powerless to help him. 
They must stand and wait till by his own efforts, 
he should reach their outstretched arms and be 
drawn to safety. In his agony his brain reeled; 
he felt his fingers relax; his nerves grow dull. 
Then, across the narrow space that still lay be- 
tween him and safety, he heard the voice of a 
friend calling, "Only a little way, Charlie, not far, 
not far !" 

Across the narrow girder of the intellect, yon- 
der scribe has been making his way upward to 
Heaven. Now with the prize almost within his 
grasp, Jesus' voice of encouragement is ringing 
across the narrow space that still separates him 
from eternal blessedness, "Not far, not far." 

But Jesus' voice is also a word of warning. He 
is still in danger. It is just before the moment 
of possible victory. It is when Braddock is 
marching through the New England forests with 
guns unloaded, and ammunition gone, that rout 
overtakes him. I know of one, a traveller, who 



158 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

had braved the snow of Siberia, the jungles of 
Africa and the typhoons of the Indian ocean, and 
returning to his quiet village home in Ohio, was 
killed by a car in front of his own door. The 
greatest danger is just before the goal is reached. 
Then the exertions of the journey mass themselves 
in a final effort to snatch the prize away. Not 
half the dangers face the railway train out upon 
the open prairie, that confront it when it begins 
to face the crossings and switches of the terminal 
city. The rocks are not out in the open sea. They 
are just outside the harbor. It is to the man 
with his hand upon the homeland gate that the 
Master says, "Take heed lest ye fall." 

When is the danger past? How close may one 
get to heaven and miss it? This scribe was very 
close to the heaven he sought. 

He had the right conception of heaven itself. 
"To love God with all the heart, and mind, and 
soul, and strength, and one's neighbor as himself 
is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacri- 
fices." He knew that heaven was a thing of the 
heart. 

He was near to heaven in recognizing Jesus as 
the Great Teacher, and the one of authority in 
life. He called Him "Master," and he was willing 
to leave the whole decision to Him. "He per- 
ceived that he answered them well." He knew that 
if any man ever had Heaven in his heart it was 
this Galilean peasant. He saw in Jesus the Way. 

He was near to Heaven in his religious practices 



MISSING HEAVEN 159 

and life. If there had been any serious flaw in his 
life, Jesus would not have allowed this opportunity 
to slip by, for awakening an accusing conscience. 
He was a moral man. He was a religious man. 
He was not far from the Kingdom of Heaven. 
That highest blessedness all men seek was not his. 
But he was near to it! There was only one step 
yet into Heaven. Jesus had taken it. 

He had taken it many times. He was destined 
to take it many times again. On that night when 
he entered the shadows of Gethsemane, he left his 
disciples, and his biographer tells us "he went a 
step further." That step was the last step into 
the Kingdom of Heaven. 

When the rich young ruler came to Jesus he 
was not far from the Kingdom of Heaven. There 
was but one step for him to take. "He went away 
sorrowful." 

What is that step which we may take with 
Jesus through Gethsemane's shadows into the 
Kingdom of Joy? — that step which refusing to 
take, we go away from its very portals, sorrow- 
ful? It was the step of final, full and com- 
plete consecration. It was the surrender of the 
life completely to God. When Jesus at the very 
beginning of his ministry said, "Get thee be- 
hind me Satan," angels came and ministered unto 
him. He had conquered self and enthroned God 
completely in his heart. And though the same 
temptation, "All these will I give thee if — " con- 
fronted his whole career, his supreme consecration 



160 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

filled his soul with an unheard of calm. And at last 
when he emerged from the shadows of Gethsemane, 
having said finally, "Thy will be done," there was 
a supernatural peace about him that made even 
hard Roman soldiers exclaim, "Truly this was a 
righteous man." 

The great commandment that Jesus gave to 
the rich young ruler was not, "Go, sell all thou 
hast," but "Come, follow me." And if he could 
have done that, the mere incident of giving up his 
wealth would have been a trifle. If he could have 
knelt with Jesus in Gethsemane, and have taken 
that last step, "Thy will be done," he would have 
found the heaven he sought. 

And, Christian, it may be you have not yet 
found the kingdom of heaven. Your Christian 
life has not brought all the happiness it ought to 
bring. You are sighing for a richer, fuller ex- 
perience, of heavenly joys. "You are not far from 
the Kingdom of Heaven." There is one w T ay to 
get it. You must follow your Master in that last 
step into Gethsemane. 

Or perhaps you are one who has never taken 
the first step into the kingdom of happiness. "You 
are not far." For though a wide gulf separates 
the ultimate Kingdom of Light, and the ultimate 
Kingdom of Darkness, their earthly portals are 
side by side. It is a choice between "the lady and 
the tiger," between God and the devil. But it is 
no blind guess. "I am the door; by me if any 
man enter in he shall be saved." "Enter ye into 



MISSING HEAVEN 161 

the joys which God hath prepared for them that 
love Him" 

Come children of the Holiest, Heaven is not 
far from any one of you. Reach out and grasp 
its eternal joys. The key that unlocks its door is 
the key of consecration. It is too bad to be so 
near and yet so far. 

"Be strong; 
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift; 
We have hard work to do and heavy loads to lift, 
Shun not thy battle; face it, 'tis God's gift. 

Be strong; 

Say not, I'm satisfied; there is no blame; 

Nor fold your hands and idly sit — oh shame! 

Stand up, speak out and bravely, in God's name." 



XII 

WHAT IS THE SUPREME MISSION OF 

THE CHRISTIAN? 



'One small life in God's great plan, 

How futile it seems as the ages roll. 
Do what it may, or strive how it can, 

To alter the sweep of the infinite whole! 
A single stitch in an infinite web 
A drop in an ocean's flow and ebb! 
But the pattern is rent where the stitch is lost, 
Or marred where the tangled threads have crossed; 
And each life that fails of its true intent, 
Mars the perfect plan that the Master meant." 

Susan Coolidge. 



WHAT IS THE SUPREME MISSION OF 
THE CHRISTIAN ? 

Ye are the salt of the earth ; but if the salt have 
lost its savor, tvhereivith shall it be salted? Mat- 
thew 5: 14. 

Ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has 
come upon you, and ye shall be my witnesses, both in 
Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost parts of the earth. Acts 1 : 8. 

Out of the visions of the past four scenes arise 
before me. 

The first is laid upon the hills of Judea over- 
looking Jerusalem, in the year 29. Already the 
early and latter rains have kissed the parched soil 
of Syria into fertility, and the bright sunshine is 
lifting bulb and bud and seed into the bloom of 
summer. Syria is either a garden or a desert, and 
now her hills and valleys are just putting on their 
rarest beauty. 

Jesus is seated here with his disciples. There 
is a touch of sorrow and perplexity in their hearts. 
He has just told them that his work is ended. 
Soon they shall see his face no more. The scenes 
through which they have so recently passed are 
fresh before them. The last supper together, the 
betrayal in the garden, the trial with its frenzied 
bigotry and confusion, the cross with its black 
darkness and its death, the burial in the rock- 
hewn tomb, the glad joy of resurrection morning 
— all are ended. 

165 



166 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

For three years Jesus has been bearing witness 
of Himself. Now he is to leave them alone in a 
heathen world. But just before he departs there 
fall from his lips, the words, "Ye shall be my wit- 
nesses." Henceforth his case is in the hands of 
his disciples. What he says to them there, is the 
echo of a far-off word he had sounded at the very 
beginning of his ministry, "Ye are the salt of the 
earth." 

And if this scene on the slopes of Olivet had 
compelled a prophecy, it would have been, that 
these eleven men would go out into that wicked 
world, in vain. That after a few years they 
would pass to ignoble deaths, and the world would 
hear of them and their message no more. 

Again, there rise before me three scenes of early 
American settlement. 

I behold a little company of exiles in the name 
of God, hewing the New England forests. They 
have just landed on an inhospitable coast. A long 
and dreary winter is before them. They are trem- 
blingly on the defensive against savages and star- 
vation. I think they will die there in the snows 
of the winter of 1620. Then, I cast my eyes 
southward to the mouth of the James river in 
Virginia. Here is gathered a little company of 
men. They are sick and dying of disease and 
nostalgia. Savages and starvation are thinning 
their ranks, and even as I look they fade away. 
And yet further southward, there is another com- 
pany of settlers at the mouth of the St. John's 



THE SUPREME MISSION 167 

river in Florida. They have fled from burning 
homes in France, and are flung half naked on a 
flowery strand; but lest they survive, the sword 
of slaughter falls upon them and its sharp edge 
does clean work. 

If these visions of eastern settlement had com- 
pelled a prophecy it would have been that three 
more companies of shivering exiles had been added 
to the history of the world's fruitless martyrdoms 
— that the faint and fluttering light on this new 
continent was about to be extinguished forever. 

But lo ! The twentieth century has dawned 
since the scene on Olivet. I behold that little com- 
pany of eleven men turned to four hundred mil- 
lion. I see following them through the deserts of 
Asia and the dark forests of Europe, the blessings 
of a new civilization and a new life everywhere. 

And three hundred years have passed by since 
these three companies of Christian exiles perished 
in the forests of the new world. I follow them, as 
for three centuries they trail their garments of 
light and victory across the land. I behold Chris- 
tian commonwealths arise as by magic; I see a 
forest wild in desolation and a desert rocked in 
sand, made to rejoice and blossom as the rose; 
I see the countless blessings of Christian civiliza- 
tion follow in their wake as the waves of darkness 
recede. 

And as I contemplate these visions turned to? 
history, I realize that it was no idle word the Gali- 
lean spoke to those disciples of his, and through 



168 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

them to Christian hearts in all the ages, "Ye are 
the salt of the earth." The supreme business of 
the Christian is to bear witness to this Jesus, by 
a life that savours and saves. 

When this mission was first laid upon the 
eleven the world was in sad need of a preserving 
force. Its corruption was not superficial, but ex- 
tended to the very heart of life. 

"On that hard pagan world, 

Disgust and sated loathing fell, 
Deep weariness and sated lust 
Made human life a hell." 

No wonder as man gazed on the vanities of 
time they had been asking, "Is life worth living?" 
Many a heart in those days felt the despairing 
philosophy to which Omar Kayam afterward gave 
utterance, 

"Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
Learned doctor, teacher, scholar, saint; 
And heard great argument, about it and about, 
But ever came out the same door wherein I went." 

The world was in need of the witness of the 
salt. And the souls that heard the divine com- 
mission, went out into the great dying, rotting 
world, and scattered over its desolate wastes the 
salt that brought a new vigor to the life of men, 
and a new day to the dark world of sin. 

The need of this salt is ever present. Today 
the call of Jesus is, "Ye are my witnesses — Ye 
are the salt of the earth." Behold the present 



THE SUPREME MISSION 169 

world. Here are men bowing before things fleet- 
ing and ephemeral. Here is wealth deified and 
poverty disgraced; virtue thwarted and vice en- 
throned. Here are the weak oppressed in sweat- 
shops and alleys, and the strong dwelling in pal- 
aces of marble. I see the miser's greed, the liber- 
tine's disgust and the drunkard's woe. I see a gen- 
eration of thoughtless men and women issuing 
from crowded theatres and ball rooms, apparently 
satisfied with these fleeting things. 

My daily papers tell me of suicides, of bribery, 
corruption, extortion and fraud. I see selfish- 
ness triumphant and greed reigning. Thought- 
less, careless, characterless, godless world! It 
needs the witness of godly men and women as 
never before. It needs salt to preserve its decay- 
ing fibre. 

It needs a satirist like Juvenal to show its fol- 
lies; it needs a preacher like Paul to herald the 
gospel of light ; it needs a defender of pure wom- 
anhood like Frances Willard ; it needs mothers like 
Jane Wesley to train their sons even in poverty 
to lead millions along the upward trail. Salt 
bearing is the supreme mission of the Christian. 
"Ye are the salt of the earth." The Master's 
"witness" is to go like a grain of salt and make 
his presence and his power felt in this dying 
world. There is on him the debt of power. Hav- 
ing the salt of life, he must make his savour felt. 

I. He is to witness first of all to the salt of 

TRUTH. 



170 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

"Half the woes of life are born of error," says 
one. Who then can measure the power of a 
single truth let fall, like salt, into a dying soul? 
We never know the possibilities of any time nor 
place for making the power of truth felt. In the 
lonely village school, away up in the hills of Ger- 
many, a teacher taught a class of ragged miners' 
boys. That teacher was alive with the truth that 
men ought to be free. Years passed, and one of 
those boys, climbing the steps of the Sancta Scala 
in Rome, suddenly exclaimed, "The just shall live 
by faith." With that truth, whose seed was 
planted, by that teacher in the days of youth, 
this young man turned the world upside down. 
There is not a school, nor shop, nor home, nor 
store anywhere that has not within it the pos- 
sibility of scattering truth that shall enrich and 
beautify the world. "Can any good thing come 
out of Nazareth?" was the question Nathaniel put 
to Philip; and something good did come. Truth 
itself came out of Nazareth; that Truth which 
has enriched the world with fullness of blessing. 

"Knowledge is Power," said Paschal. It is 
power for evil as well as good. But the knowl- 
edge of Truth is salt, that scattered into the lives 
of men redeems, saves. "Ye shall know the truth 
and the truth shall make you free." 

Life may never offer to the soul a wide range 
of possibilities, but the value of a life, like the 
value of a well, is not measured by its circumfer- 
ence, but by its depth, and by the waters that are 



THE SUPREME MISSION 171 

drawn from it. No soul lives that has not at- 
tained some truth. It may be one talent, or it 
may be ten, but that truth has a mission to per- 
form. It is salt, full of savour. 

The world wants men who know. It is tired of 
men who reason of time and eternity and write 
"agnosco" above their toil. It wants men who 
see the invisible, as Moses saw it, and endure in 
it though the heavens fall. Never has the world 
so stood in the need of the salt of truth as today. 
Deceit and error are everywhere, and the heart 
of man is crying, "O, that I might know the 
truth." 

"But," someone says, "what can my knowledge 
of the truth do in a world so perplexed with 
doubts and so steeped in error?" "What can I 
do?" the raindrop asked as it fell on the petal of 
a flower that was parched and dried. What it 
did was to cause the flower to revive and bloom 
again. A traveller, weary and sick of heart saw 
it, and it awoke in him the truth of God's love 
once more. And he became the apostle of a 
brighter day to thousands of lives. And all be- 
cause the raindrop by its faithfulness taught him 
one little truth. 

It is a law of physics that the brilliancy of a 
light depends on one's ability to focus it to a 
point. The beauty and power of truth depend 
upon the ability of its possessor to centre and 
focus that truth on the heart of another. 

What wondrous power has truth! Goldsmith 



172 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

tells us of its power in the lips of a lowly son of 
toil, 

"Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, 
And fools who came to scoff remained to pray." 

If men only knew the truth, if they understood 
true life, if they understood each other; if the 
films of ignorance could be lifted, and we should 
behold the fullness of "things as they are," what 
a glorious world this would be ! "Go ye into all 
the world," bearing the salt of Truth. 

II. Again, the Christian is to bear the salt of 

CHARACTER. 

"Character is greater than intellect," says 
Emerson. Character is truth lived. A man may 
know, and his knowledge count for naught if it be 
not backed by life. "Actions speak louder than 
words," and character, which is the regulator of 
men's actions, is more important even than the 
salt of truth. The influence of character on life 
in an old theme, and upon it volumes have been 
written ; and yet it is ever new. The living epistles 
men read, are they which energize and fructify. 

The opportunities for character to tell upon the 
world are wider and deeper than those of truth 
bearing. One need not speak to have his character 
felt; wherever he moves there will fall from him 
unconsciously, influences — salt — to affect the lives 
of those he passes, even as Peter's shadow falling 
on the sick of Jerusalem, healed them. The poet 
Gray was wrong. No "flower is born to blush 



THE SUPREME MISSION 173 

unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air." 
The flower of character, no matter how obscure, 
is an unconscious blessing to the world. 

But character will reveal itself in conscious 
acts as well. Its outward deeds will be a living 
expression of its inner worth. The heart of true 
character is sincerity, the inner and the outer life 
in perfect correspondence. Sincerity is a grand 
word. It comes from two Latin words. The an- 
cient makers of vases used to fill the flaws in their 
imperfect vases with wax to hide their defects. 
But occasionally there came a vase from the fur- 
naces, flawless. And they labelled it in the mar- 
ket sine cera, without wax. That is what true 
character is, the same through and through. 

Paul used a different word when he prayed that 
his converts might "be sincere." The figure is 
also from the market-place, and the word means 
"tested in the sunlight," just as merchants today 
put their cloths to the test of the sunlight. 

And it is in the realm of character that is set 
woman's throne of glory. "The hand that rocks 
the cradle rules the world." It will be a sorry 
day for earth when womanhood forsakes her high- 
est mission, — that of scattering abroad the salt 
of sincere character in a tempted and sinful world. 
One has only to read the history of the past to 
measure the power of womanhood in the realm of 
character. Madame de Stael in France, Florence 
Nightingale in England, Frances Willard in 
America, and Ethelberga of the Saxon days, are 
shining marks of woman's power for good. And 



174 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

what possibilities of evil rise before us when we 
think of Jezebel and Herodias and Catherine de 
Medici ! 

The influence of character is immortal. It is 
salt that never loses its savor, but sends its pre- 
serving forces into each succeeding generation. 

In one of the parks of New York there is a 
statue of Nathan Hale, and beneath it are those 
last words of his, "I regret that I have but one 
life to give for my country." As each succeeding 
generation looks upon them it is thrilled to a new 
patriotism; and Nathan Hale being dead, yet 
speaketh. 

Benedict Arnold, the traitor, dying in obscur- 
ity said, "I was born an American, I die an Amer- 
ican, but in America I have not one friend." How 
different these two messages out of the past, and 
yet they both live — are unconsciously immortal. 

When the noble, gentle-charactered and perse- 
cuted Wyclif died, his enemies exhumed his body 
and burning it, scattered its ashes in a brook 
near the Avon. Wordsworth has beautifully told 
us of the rapid spread and universal influence of 
Wyclif's character in the symbol of this deed. 

"As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear 
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide 
Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas, 
Into the main ocean they; this deed accursed 
An emblem yields to friends and enemies, 
How their bold teacher's life, sanctified 
By truth, shall spread throughout the world dis- 
persed." 



THE SUPREME MISSION 175 

III. The Christian is to bear also the salt of 
the Gospel. 

The supreme need of the world is salvation from 
its sin. The universal question is, "What must 
I do to be saved?" Jesus said, M Z am come to 
seek and to save that which was lost." "Ye shall 
be my witnesses." As he spoke, there flashed 
across his vision the picture of a hopeless world, 
dying in its sins — a lost world. With daring 
assurance he declared Himself to be the Saviour 
of the world, and his Gospel the message of sal- 
vation. "Go ye into all the world and preach my 
gospel to every creature." "Ye are the salt of 
the earth." The word gospel means "good news." 
And the good news these salt bearers were to 
carry was of God come down to live with men, 
and to "give his life a ransom for many," "that 
whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but 
have eternal life." 

Civilization has had many ebbs and flows since 
then. She nowhere moves forward in solid pha- 
lanx. Her ascent is spiral. Sometimes she passes 
through the same scenes, only a little higher up 
in the scale of life. But in times of darkness, when 
moral and intellectual light has been almost ex- 
tinguished, this gospel has been the one preserving 
force — the salt of the earth. Whatever of good 
there was preserved in those dark ages from 476 
to 1453, was preserved in the hearts of men who 
carried this gospel, planted deep within. 

The key to the Christian's power is in the gospel 



176 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

he carries. The trouble with many of the world's 
movements for betterment today is that men have 
gotten away from that gospel of Jesus as the key 
to all betterment. There are all kinds of altruisms 
and schemes of sociological and psychological fol 
de rol, that aim to uplift humanity without recog- 
nizing the gospel of God. It is asking men to 
lift themselves by their own bootstraps. 

There has actually been started a religion with- 
out a God. Men would have us believe that re- 
ligion consists in reciting beautiful poems and 
going into ecstasies over twittering birds and 
blossoming flowers. There is a false liberality, 
that prides itself on its intellectual and cultured 
religion, but is still in its spiritual and intellectual 
swaddling clothes. 

It is because at heart the true Christian still 
clings to the real gospel that the church is a factor 
in life today. True religion will be altruistic, but 
altruism is not religion. Religion is living the life 
of God. The only true "good news" is that which 
lifts humanity into the bosom of the Father. 

Such is the gospel of Jesus. Its aim is an 
at-one-ment of man with God. Its aim is not to 
dominate life, but like salt to permeate it. It is 
an engrafted power, that takes the wild grapes of 
human life, and changes them into the muscatel; 
that joins the frail June rose to the character of 
Jesus until it becomes the American Beauty. 

The Christian is to bear the salt of the gospel, 
a message of "good news," to men who are long- 



THE SUPREME MISSION 177 

ing for some dawn to break on the darkness of a 
hopeless, Godless life. A gospel that answers the 
question of the jailor of Philippi, "What must I 
do to be saved?" by saying, "God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but 
have eternal life." 

IV. And lastly, the Christian is to bear the 
salt of Optimism. 

Cheer and courage and a solid faith in one's 
mission are the secrets of a life that bears salt. 
In the bearing of Truth, Character and the Gospel 
the way it is borne is sure to count. 

Shakespeare's Hamlet was a marvellous char- 
acter, and the world has not ceased to wonder at 
the mind that created him. He had a noble mis- 
sion, a keen intellect and a wonderful plan. Yet 
Hamlet Failed ! And he failed because he lacked 
a sturdy optimism to bear him up in defeat. He 
lacked decision; he lacked faith in himself; he 
lacked faith in his fellows; he lacked faith in 
God. 

It was otherwise with Paul, the mighty man of 
history. He went bearing the salt of truth, char- 
acter, the gospel, with a cheerful countenance and 
a calm heart. Before a mob that seeks his life, 
imprisoned, in storm and shipwreck, his one mes- 
sage is, "Be of good cheer." Always he was the 
same smiling, optimistic Paul. He could say at 
the close of life, "I have fought a good fight." 

His eyes were never on the dust. His song was 



178 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

"I look above, my eyes are there attracted 
By one at God's right hand, divinely fair; 
And as I look my soul finds satisfaction; 
Oh! let me gaze forever, only there. " 

It is the optimist who lifts humanity out of its 
sorrows and its sins. It is he who "loses himself 
in the lives of other men," and by losing his life 
finds it again. The world has sorrows enough to 
overwhelm it. It would be overwhelmed if it were 
not for the salt of a glorious optimism that the 
disciples of Jesus are scattering everywhere in the 
despondent hearts of men. Riley tells us beauti- 
fully of the power of this salt. 

"When a man ain't got a cent, and he's feelin' kind 

of blue 
An' the clouds hang dark and heavy and won't let 

the sunshine through, 
It's a great thing, oh, my brethren, for a feller just 

to lay 
His hand upon your shoulder in a friendly sort of 

way. 

It makes a chap feel curious, it makes the tear drops 

start, 
An' you feel a sort of flutter in the region of your 

heart, 
You can't look up into his eyes, you don't know what 

to say, 
When a hand is on your shoulder in a friendly sort 

of way. 

Oh, the world's a curious compound, with its honey 
and its gall, 



THE SUPREME MISSION 179 

With its cares and bitter crosses, but a good world 

after all, 
An* a good God must have made it; leastways that's 

what I say 
When a hand is on my shoulder in a friendly sort of 

way." 

There is a sad alternative before us, "If the 
salt have lost its savour." How often does it hap- 
pen that lives, like the washed sands along the 
shore of the Dead Sea, have had all their savour 
taken away. Of course they are "good for noth- 
ing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of 
man." Lives must themselves be sweet if they are 
to sweeten others. To keep them sweet and pure 
and holy, the soul must go often to the Fountain 
of all sweetness which emerges from beneath the 
throne of God. 

This is a strange world in which we live. It is 
a world that professes and does not practice; a 
world immoral and a world unjust; a world of 
shame and a world of crime; a world of sorrow 
and a world of sin ; a world of doubt and a world 
of despair. It is a world that cheats and lies ; 
a wicked world, heedless of God; a selfish world; 
a conceited world; a world that scoffs at holy 
things ; impious, hateful, ignorant, diseased, de- 
caying, dying, lost. 

Of this world, Christian, ye are the salt. Into 
it go ye, bearing that precious sweetness the Mas- 
ter alone supplies ; that glorious witness of noblest 
life, which He has so fittingly called "the salt of 
the earth." 



180 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

"O God of my heart, by Thy grace divine 
Let Thy Spirit within me flow; 
Bid my soul in Thine its love entwine, 
That my life may gleam with a light not mine, 
And the savor of salty sweetness show. ,, 



XIII 

WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF A 
CHRISTIAN ? 



"A Hindu trader in Keerwara market once asked 
Pema, 'What medicine do you put on your face to 
make it shine so?' 

Pema answered, 'I don't put anything on/ 

'No, but what do you put on?' again asked the 
Hindu trader. 

'Nothing. I don't put anything on.' 

'Yes you do. All the Christians do. I have seen 
it in Agra, and I have seen it in Ahmadabad and 
Surat, and I have seen it in Bombay.' 

Pema laughed, and his happy face shone the more, 
as he said, 'Yes, I'll tell you the medicine: it is a 
happy Christian heart.' " 

Louis Albert Banks, "Problems of Youth" 

"Major General Charles George Gordon, C. B., 

who at all times 

and everywhere gave his strength 

to the weak, 

His substance to the poor, 

His sympathy to the suffering, 

His heart to God." 

Inscription on the tomb of General Gordon. 



WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF A 
CHRISTIAN? 

Ye believe in God, believe also in me. John 14: 1. 

Except your righteousness shall exceed the right- 
eousness of the scribes and Pharisees ye shall in no 
case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Matthew 
5:20. 

What do ye more than others? Matthew 5:47. 

I sat one summer evening in a boat on one of 
our northern lakes, beneath the glory of a cloud- 
less sky. The moon had not yet risen to dim the 
splendor of even the smallest and furthest orb of 
light. The heavens were alive with fire. It seemed 
as if there were not an inch of space from horizon 
to horizon that did not boast its twinkling star. 

I had long ago forgotten most of my astronomy, 
and should not have been attracted to any special 
portion of the heavens, had it not been that in the 
east, only a little way above the horizon, there 
shone a star, distinguished far above its fellows 
in power and brilliancy. I knew that it was many 
thousand miles away, but it seemed as if a child, 
longing for some new plaything, might reach up 
its hand and pluck it from the jewelled robe of 
night. 

Its brightness seemed to bring it very near, and 
its unusual splendor marked it as unique. In vain 
I searched the heavens for its equal. Then I real- 
ized as never before why men had named it "the 
evening star." 

183 



184 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

I began to wonder what it was about this star 
that attracted my attention instantly. Further 
away than many others, the same medium between 
us, it was outshining them all; and a little later 
when a film of cloud crept over the heavens, and 
not another star could be seen, yon star still 
gleamed. One who understands the heavens has 
told me since that there is something peculiar 
about the structure of that star that gives it its 
unusual brilliancy and marks it in the heavens. 

Here is suggested a wonderful thought. Not 
a few Christian hearts are troubled about the 
"signs of the Christian." They say they "hope," 
they "trust" they are Christians. But they are 
not sure of it. How may the world know that they 
are really the Master's? How may they know 
it themselves ? What are the distinguishing marks 
of a Christian? 

Evidently the Christian, like "the evening star," 
is to be unique and distinguished from all others 
by the peculiar brilliancy of his light. For here 
is Jesus, at the very beginning of his ministry, 
not at its close, saying to his disciples : "Let your 
light so shine before men that they may see your 
good works and glorify your Father which is in 
heaven." "Ye are the light of the world — a city 
set upon a hill (which) cannot be hid." "Verily, 
verily I say unto you, except your righteousness 
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Phari- 
sees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom 
of God." 



THE SIGNS OF A CHRISTIAN 185 

"You see yon publican there. You consider 
him the most degraded man among you. Yet he 
is kind, and good, and just, to those who are 
kind, and good, and just to him. If that is all 
you are, what better are ye than the publican? 
What do ye more than others?" 

Evidently Jesus expected the Christian to be a 
man of mark; to carry with him qualities, that 
would at once identify him as "Christ's Man." 
He intended the Christian to shine like the even- 
ing star, a unique creation. There was never to 
be the slightest doubt in the minds of others, nor 
in the mind of the Christian himself, that he was 
Christ's — a Christian. 

That was true of His life. Wherever He went 
men came running to Him and saying, "Master, 
Master." John has been preaching the coming 
Messiah to a crowd of his followers by Jordan. 
Suddenly in the throng, one day, he points to a 
man standing there, and says, "This is He of 
whom I spake." There was something about 
Christ that challenged men's attention instantly 
and marked Him. There was never any doubt in 
His mind as to the reality of his Deity. He never 
said he "hoped," he "trusted," he was the Son of 
God. His one word was "I am" 

The early Christians were like Him. They be- 
came marked men. People "took knowledge of 
them that they had been with Jesus." They knew 
they were Christians and their persistence in that 
knowledge led them to the arena and the cross. 



186 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

They possessed a certain something that marked 
them as more than ordinary men. At Antioch 
that difference became so marked that the finger 
was pointed at them as they passed, and men 
whispered to their companions, "Christians !" 

What was it that marked these men? You re- 
member sometime going to hear some man of great 
reputation speak. But when you saw him you 
were disappointed. He was not a handsome man ; 
he spoke with none of the gifts of oratory, and 
you wondered why it was that his words burned 
into your very soul, and sent you away like one 
of Demosthenes' hearers, saying, "Let us go and 
fight Philip." Then long afterward you discov- 
ered that, unknown to men, this man had been 
giving up his life to the service of a great cause. 
Then you knew the secret of his power. He was 
doing more than others. You call the eagle the 
king of birds, because he soars the highest into the 
blue. 

Such is the Christian — the real Christian. 
Wherever he goes men fall down before him say- 
ing, "What have I to do with thee, O thou man of 
God?" The religion of Jesus is a religion of 
doing. "Do ye, do ye," are words most often on 
the Master's lips. And it is not a religion of 
mere doing, but of doing more. It deals in com- 
paratives and superlatives only. A Christian is 
one who does more than others, no matter how 
much others may do. 

Men say to me often, "There is So and So, just 



THE SIGNS OF A CHRISTIAN 187 

as good a man as your average Christian." This 
ought not so to be. The Christian is Christ's man. 
He has God's image and superscription on him, 
and the severest indictment that can be brought 
against him is that you cannot find him in a 
crowd. 

"What do ye more than others?" Let us ask 
ourselves that question. What are the things that 
are going to indicate to others and to convince 
our own hearts that we are real Christians ? Why, 
our deeds ! Yes, but there cannot be doing with- 
out being. We must be something before we can 
do anything. A Christian will be more than 
others. "Out of the heart are the issues of life," 
and one must have an enlarged heart before he 
can hope to enlarge his deeds. But to get an en- 
larged heart, he must have an enlarged belief. 
The Christian will believe more, be more, do more. 
The three things that are to mark him are his 
Creed, his Character, his Conduct. 

I. His creed is first. He must believe more. 
There is a great deal of foolish talk against 
creeds today. It is assumed that the creedless man 
is a superior sort of creature, of loftier vision and 
larger mold. The real truth is that every intelli- 
gent being must have his creed. A ship cannot 
be steered without a rudder of some sort. One 
cannot say, "creeds are foolish," without declar- 
ing by those very words that he himself has a 
creed. He who does anything, from the very na- 
ture of the case must first believe he can do it. 



188 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

And he who has the largest and most comprehen- 
sive creed is he who is going to do the greatest 
deeds. 

I well remember the words of one of my good 
old professors. We were a group of young stu- 
dents just ready to take up the active service of 
the Christian ministry. He had called us aside 
on that beautiful spring afternoon for a final 
heart to heart talk. Could we ever forget it? 
The grand old man of seventy years of service! 
Some of us had dabbled a little in popular science 
and criticism — just enough to undermine our 
faith a little. Now his last word to us was an 
appeal to be men of lofty creed, and exalted be- 
liefs. "I tell you, men," he said, "you must be- 
lieve in the things you preach to the very bottom 
of your souls. You must have a mighty creed, 
and believe it intensely, if you are ever to do any- 
thing for the world." 

The creed of the Christian has no peer. "Love 
your enemies and bless then that curse you." "He 
that humbleth himself shall be exalted." "Resist 
not evil, but overcome evil with good." "Judge 
not." "As ye would that men should do unto you 
do ye even so to them." "Love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, and 
strength, and thy neighbor as thyself." "Be con- 
tent, be patient, be sincere, be meek, be holy." "Be 
absolutely thorough; enter in by the strait 
gate." "Never deviate from the rule of right, no 
matter what befall." "Aim to get away from the 



THE SIGNS OF A CHRISTIAN 189 

dust and soar into the presence of God." "Be ye 
perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect." 

The ancient religions all have their creeds, but 
nowhere is there a creed like that. There are 
hints of delicate virtues here and there. But an- 
cient faith lived in a little world, and ancient 
morality like ancient knowledge was narrow, nebu- 
lous and negative. The creed of the Christian 
soars into the highest heaven of self -attainment 
and altruistic service. 

The Christian has the creed of Christ. He has 
more. He has the creed of Christ, plus Christ 
himself. Christianity is not a system of teaching. 
It is a system of teaching, lived. The added con- 
ception of Jesus Himself, furnishes the Christian 
creed with a new life-giving power. 

The creed of the Christian is a bolder creed. It 
says more, promises more, professes more, hopes 
for more. Its conceptions are always larger and 
loftier than mere convention demands. It differs 
from all other creeds as the mariner's compass 
differs from a weather vane. Its claims are more 
stupendous than the visions of any prophet and 
its program of triumph beyond the dreams of any 
conqueror. 

"Ye believe," said Jesus, "believe also! "Be- 
lieve more, Christians !" "Greater works than I 
do shall ye do, but you must believe also !" 

"In tumult loud j and battle shout, 
Amid the war of world and state, 
When rabbles flee in utter rout 



190 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

And none are reckoned great; 
Above life's low and ordinary flow 
Beyond its crags and mountain snow 
Shines bright the star that 'believes also/ ' 

II. But this Christian creed will fulfill itself 
in a Christian character. Believing more is the 
first sign of the Christian. And just as surely as 
water seeks its level, will believing and doing be- 
come one. 

The real Christian is more than others. He 
cannot help but be so ; he believes more. His char- 
acter is always better than his reputation. He is 
not merely a reformed sinner. He is more. He 
is a new creature. A change has taken place in 
his life, not at its circumference, but at its heart. 
"A new heart will I give thee." The stream of 
his character is purified not only by its ordinary 
flow, but it has a new fountainhead, from which 
gush new and crystal waters. A little leaven has 
entered the meal until the whole is leavened. 
Through and through a new power is at work in 
him, and he is a new creature. 

His character now is like the purity of the 
snow crystal, through and through, gleaming 
whiteness. He shines like the flawless diamond, 
with pencils of clearest light. His clean exterior 
is no pale coating of alabaster over a black heart. 
You can turn the X-rays on him and you will find 
the same material throughout his whole being. 
This is the secret of Christian magnetism. This 
is Jesus 5 secret, about which men marvel. "I, if I 



THE SIGNS OF A CHRISTIAN 191 

be lifted up will draw all men unto me." It is 
not strange. It is the drawing power of highest 
character. 

"These Christians are a very obstreperous lot," 
wrote Pliny to Caesar, "and I would fain be rid 
of them ; but I can find nothing whereof to accuse 
them, and so justify their death." Oh, Pliny, you 
are juster than another Roman governor, who 
sending one to the Cross said, "I find no fault in 
Him." 

Wolsey once wrote of Lee, "I shall never for- 
get his sweet, winning smile, nor his clear, honest 
eyes. I have met many great men, but Lee alone 
impressed me with the feeling that I was in the 
presence of a man of grander mold and finer metal 
than others I have known. I have met with only 
two men who realize my ideal of what a true hero 
should be. Charles Gordon was one and Lee the 
other." Did it ever occur to the great English- 
man, that those wonderful qualities in these men 
that challenged his admiration were due to the 
fact that they were living characters born of the 
Christian creed? 

"One prayed in vain to paint the vision blest 
Which shone upon his heart by night and day, 
But homely duties in his dwelling pressed, 
And hungry hearts that would not turn away, 
And cares that still his eager hands bade stay. 
The canvas never knew the painted face 
But year by year, while yet the vision shone, 
An angel near him, wondering, bent to trace 
In his own life the Master's image grown." 



192 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

The superlative conceptions that make the 
Christian creed are bound to reflect themselves in 
a superlative character. 

III. But believing and being are only incident 
to doing. Creed and character are the steps that 
lead to conduct. "What do ye more than others ?" 
was Jesus' question. And he had a right to ask 
it. If the Christian believes more and is more, it 
is a fair question, "What do ye more?" 

"I give as much to charity, and am just as 
honest as my competitor across the street," said 
a Christian business man to me once. But his 
competitor was not a Christian. It is too bad 
if Christians are going to measure their stand- 
ards of doing by the standards of the world. 
There are not many Christians like this, for a 
Christian is bound to do more than other men. 
I mean the real Christian. Not the Christian who 
lets religion end with baking a cake for a church 
supper, or attending a Brotherhood banquet. 
There is no Christianity in that. 

The criticism is often made of the Christian 
that he is not a man of large service. The criti- 
cism is false. The real Christian is the only true 
altruist. And if one will get Beneath the exterior 
of all the great movements of uplift in the world, 
he will discover Christian deeds behind them all. 
The world expects and knows the Christian to 
believe more, to be more, to do more. 

Let us press this question home upon ourselves. 
How shall we and the world know that we are 
Christians ? 



THE SIGNS OF A CHRISTIAN 193 

How about our home life? Is there more of 
tenderness, forbearance, self-denial and real love 
in our Christian home than in the ordinary home? 
Is there a light shining there that marks it as a 
Christian home? Would a stranger entering there 
know it to be a Christian home? "What do we 
more than others?" 

And what of our pleasures ? As we move among 
our fellows in the social world, is there something 
about the kind of amusements we enjoy, and the 
way we enjoy them, that marks us as Christians? 
Even in an evening's pleasure do men say of us, 
"He has been with Jesus ?" 

How about our business life? The Christian 
man is not merely to be honest. As a matter of 
policy all good business men are honest. The 
Christian is more. His business methods are 
keyed higher than the standards of the street if 
he is a true Christian. 

I have heard of two lawyers, one a Christian 
and the other a Jew. They were employed to- 
gether on a case in New York. When they came 
to decide what their fee should be, the Jew sug- 
gested that $5000 would be a fair amount. The 
Christian laughed. "Leave that to me, and I'll 
get you $10,000 in twenty-four hours." Next 
morning he put a check in the Jew's hand for 
$10,000. The Jew took it, smiled, and said with 
a sneer, "My friend, 'almost thou persuadest me to 
be a Christian.' " How may a Christian busi- 
ness man know he is such and convince the world 
of it? "What do ye more than others?" 



194 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

What of our public life as citizens of the state? 
The voice of the real Christian will be heard in 
the caucus for clean men. He will not need argu- 
ments to convince him that he ought to vote for 
righteousness. He will be a leader in righteous- 
ness, and will despise so small a thing as party 
when truth and purity and honor are at stake. 

This is a sober question for the Christian. The 
real Christian cannot hide his light under a bushel. 
The signs that mark him will be seen of men. I 
have said the real Christian, for I known that there 
are many Christians at whom the world points the 
finger of scorn. Their religion is not real! 

But the world knows the real Christian, and it 
believes in his superlative worth. He lets his light 
shine before men. 

"Ah," but someone says, "that kind of Chris- 
tians are so few. What can they amount to in a 
world so full of sham and pretense? Of what avail 
a few lives that bear the marks of real Christian 
power ?" 

Christian, it is no part of the lighthouse keep- 
er's duty to sail the reeling craft upon the ocean. 
The sailors are responsible for that. It is his 
business to trim his lamps and let them shine. 
"Let your light so shine before men that they 
may see your good works." 

There is a river in the south. Its waters are 
black and unclean. But at frequent intervals along 
its course clear, crystal streams from the moun- 
tains pour their waters into it. Were it not for 



THE SIGNS OF A CHRISTIAN 195 

their sacrifice to this muddy river, its waters 
would stagnate and rot. The clean currents from 
the upland are its salvation. Like a clear moun- 
tain stream, is the real Christian life, emptying 
into the miasmic flood of humanity, purifying, re- 
deeming, saving. 

What are the signs of the Christian? How are 
we to know when the real life of the Master has 
entered our hearts? How is the world to know it? 

When spring comes after the long winter, the 
frozen earth bursts into new bloom and fragrance. 
When the night is over and the morning dawns, 
the world is filled with a new light. When health 
comes back after illness, the signs of health ap- 
pear in the ruddy face, the brightening eye, the 
buoyant step. When Christ enters the heart, the 
signs of Christ appear in a loftier creed, a purer 
character, a nobler service. 

Our religion is not a thing of orthodoxy, cere- 
monialism or church membership. It is a life that 
believes more, is more, does more. 

"Ye bear the name of Christians, 
His name and sign ye bear." 

Christian, do you? If Christ has really en- 
tered the heart there will be something about your 
very presence that will compel men to say as one 
did to Peter long ago, "Thou art also one of 
them." 



XIV 
WHAT SHALL I THINK ABOUT JESUS ? 



'There have been many noble characters in this 
world, — glorious heroes, patriots, philanthropists, re- 
formers, martyrs — men and women before whose 
names Christendom bows, and bows justly. It is 
around such transcendent characters as these, tower- 
ing like mountains above the plains of common hu- 
manity, that the reverence of the ages loves to wrap 
the robe of spotless purity, even as virgin snow en- 
wraps the distant Alpine ranges. But as the actual 
attempt to climb these snowy heights discloses, here 
and there, huge gorges and beetling precipices, so 
also does a nearer inspection of these transcendent 
characters disclose many a defect and deformity 
which mars and hides the general beauty. . . Only 
one character in all history has endured all tests of 
keenest scrutiny, — Jesus of Nazareth.'' 

Boardman, "The Problem of Jesus." 

"There lives at this time in Judea, a man of singu- 
lar character, whose name is Jesus. The barbarians 
esteem him a prophet, but his followers adore him as 
the immediate offspring of the immortal God. He is 
endowed with such unparalleled virtue as to call back 
the dead from their graves, and to heal every disease 
with a word or touch. He is modest, temperate and 
wise; in short, whatever this phenomenon may turn 
out in the end, he seems at present a man of excellent 
beauty and divine perfections, every way surpassing 
the children of men." — From a letter of Publius Len- 
tilus to the Roman Senate. 



WHAT SHALL I THINK ABOUT JESUS? 

Can there be any good thing out of Nazareth ? 
John 1 : 46. 

"A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, 
neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." 
The truth of this aphorism of Jesus seems to be 
recognized in those words of Nathaniel, "Can 
there be any good thing out of Nazareth?" Nath- 
aniel was a city man, and he had all of a city 
man's contempt for that insignificant little village 
of Galilee, which was all but unknown, and whose 
very existence even, the historians of his native 
land had passed over, as unworthy of a historian's 
notice. Nazareth was a place of rare natural 
beauty, but that was all that had ever been said 
to her credit. From her no great thing, nothing 
eminent and worth while, had ever come to offset 
her insignificance. No wonder the name "Naz- 
arene" was one of contempt. The light of God 
shone over her hills, and the "darkness appre- 
hended it not." 

It is, therefore, not surprising that when Philip 
comes to Nathaniel with the words, "We have 
found him of whom Moses in the law and the 
prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of 
Joseph," Nathaniel should say, "Can there be 
any good thing out of Nazareth?" 

John Douglas Adam, in the Record of Chris- 

199 



200 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

tian Work, tells us that there are three possible 
attitudes that one may take toward Jesus of Naza- 
reth ; the attitude of Hostility, the attitude of Per- 
plexity and the attitude of Devotion. 

Nathaniel was in the attitude of perplexity. 
He was "an Israelite indeed in whom was no 
guile," but he did not know what to make of this 
strange new phenomenon in the religious world. 
He was prejudiced against him because he came 
from a town with a bad name. The shadow had 
become confused, in his mind, with the substance, 
and he did not know what to think. Philip wisely 
says to him, "Come and see !" 

There are very few today who are openly hos- 
tile to Jesus himself, whatever they may think of 
his church. In ever increasing numbers, but still 
few, are those who are really devoted to him. The 
great crowd of men is with Nathaniel in the atti- 
tude of perplexity. If one asks them, "What 
think ye of Christ?" they frankly tell you they do 
not know what to think. There has been so much 
confusion in men's thought about him that the 
heart is perplexed, and finds itself asking, "Can 
there be any good thing out of Nazareth?" This 
attitude of perplexity is born of false or insuffi- 
cient light. And it is not a case where "ignor- 
ance is bliss, 'twere folly to be wise." For here is 
one who, for two thousand years has exerted a 
most tremendous influence on the world, so great 
indeed, that the whole trend of humanity's ex- 
perience has been altered. Here is a person who 



JESUS 201 

makes the most stupendous claims, which if true, 
must alter completely the activities of all men here, 
and their destiny hereafter and forever. 

There is one way of clearing up this attitude of 
perplexity. It is the method that Philip pro- 
posed to Nathaniel, "Come and see." 

And we shall have to study this phenomenon 
from Nazareth, in the light of his own claims to 
the world's recognition. As we turn to the gospels, 
which are the only biographies we have of him, 
we find him claiming to be unique, and differing 
from all other men in three aspects of his being — ■ 
as a Person, as a Prophet, as a Priest. 

I. As a Person. 

I turn to the gospels first of all to see what 
claims this personality makes as to himself. I 
assume that these books are historical documents. 
There may be few errors in them, but they are 
not such as to affect the general truth of the nar- 
rative they give. They tell us as fairly as any 
history could, the facts concerning this man from 
Nazareth. The best scholarship of the world is 
agreed on this. 

I find that they tell the story of a wonderful 
person. Men marvel at him; others gnash their 
teeth. They who hate him are saying, "Never 
man spake like this man." He says to men as he 
passes, "Follow me," and they leave all and fol- 
low him. Multitudes of the common people throng 
him so that he has no time to eat or rest. Wicked 
men cower before him, and cultured scholars seek 



202 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

him in the night, only to marvel at his superior 
wisdom. 

He is making stupendous claims. "I am the 
Way, the Truth and the Life." "Come unto me 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will 
give you rest." "If ye love father or mother or 
wife or child more than me, ye are not worthy of 
me." "Ye have heard it is written in the Scrip- 
tures, but I — I say unto you." "I am greater 
than your father Abraham." "Behold a greater 
than Solomon is here." "I am unique. Other 
men do not belong to the same order of being as 
I." "I am from above, and ye are from below." 
"I do always the things that are pleasing to the 
Father." "The Father and I are one." "All 
authority is given unto me in heaven and on 
earth." "When ye pray say, 'forgive us our debts 
as we forgive our debtors; 5 but 'which of you 
convicteth me of sin.' " "My kingdom is from 
everlasting to everlasting." "I ascend to my 
Father, and the Father hath committed all judg- 
ment unto the Son, that all men should honor the 
Son even as they honor the Father." "He that 
honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father 
which hath sent him." Stupendous Claims! 

But there are deeds as wonderful as his words. 
He deprecates miracles, and signs, and wonders. 
He says to men with something of sadness in his 
voice, "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will 
not believe." And yet to relieve their sufferings, 
and to calm their fears, I behold a marvellous 



JESUS 203 

array of wonders at his hand. "The deaf hear, 
the blind see, the dumb speak, lepers are cleansed, 
the lame walk, the dead are raised." His life be- 
gins with a miracle and ends with another. 

And in it all, amid these gigantic claims, and 
marvellous deeds, there breathes from this life a 
spirit so meek, a love so tender, a compassion so 
deep, a fragrance so pure, as to make it for 
twenty centuries, the symbol of earth's fairest and 
best. Surely if this life is not all the hearts of 
Christians think it to be, it is a life we might 
well wish were true. 

If we are to judge it by human standards only, 
and simply say this Jesus is a man, yet have we 
something unique in manhood. Here is a person 
unique in his claims, unique in his deeds, unique 
in his influence on the world, unique in the achieve- 
ment of a perfect life. 

"Alone," says Carnegie Simpson, "absolutely 
alone, among leaders of the soul, Jesus absorbs 
the highest principles into his own personality. 
No other ever dared thus. Who else has said of 
truth, not that he teaches it, but that it is he ; of 
the vision of God, not that he has seen it, but that 
it is the sight of himself; of that which supplies 
all man's need of rest, of spiritual food, of pardon, 
of strength, not that he can point to it, but that 
it is all in him? Not Moses nor the prophets, not 
Plato nor the Buddha nor Mahomet spoke thus. 
But Jesus did so deliberately, habitually, pro- 
nouncedly." 



204 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

And his life expressed all it professed. Sidney 
Lanier calls it "The Crystal" life. 

"But Thee, but Thee, O Sov'reign Seer of Time, 
But Thee, O Poet's Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, 
But Thee, O man's Best Man, O Love's Best Love, 
O Perfect Life, in perfect labor writ; 
O all men's Comrade, Servant, King or Priest, — 
What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, 
What least defect or shadow of defect, 
What rumor tattled by an enemy, 
Of inference loose, what lack of grace, 
Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's or death's, — 
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, 
Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?" 

But Jesus' claim is not alone to unique man- 
hood. Though entering fully into the life of hu- 
manity, he will not for a moment allow himself to 
be classed as a mere man. He never stops to argue 
with men the question of his Deity. He assumes 
it. Others are not like him. He deems it an 
axiom that he and the Father are one. He de- 
clares himself to be the Son of God with as much 
of assurance as he claims to be the Son of Man. 
He was always saying, "Whom do men say that I, 
the Son of Man, am?" And when he found one 
who could say, "Thou are the Christ, the Son of 
the Living God," straightway he cried, "Upon this 
rock I will build my church." Jesus claimed to be 
Deity. There is no question about it. A thou- 
sand theologies have been framed to explain that 
assertion of his, and a thousand more to prove it 
false. It was the fundamental claim of Jesus. In 



JESUS 205 

his eyes it explained the marvel of his life: "It is 
not I that do the works, but the Father that 
worketh in me, He doeth the works." "I speak 
unto you the things which I have heard of my 
Father." 

It is plain beyond question that the New Testa- 
ment, and especially the words of Jesus himself, 
teach his essential Deity. But the Deity of Jesus 
is not established by proof texts and an elaborate 
theology. Human history since that day has been 
a different thing. This Galilean has gone every- 
where and "turned the world upside down." The 
calendar has been altered. The waves of dark- 
ness have receded before the "light that never 
shone on land and sea." In countless millions, 
men have heard his call, "Take up thy cross and 
follow me," and the only reward promised 
them is the approval of this Man here and here- 
after. As the horizon of humanity widens, this 
unseen Presence leads the way. On every shore 
men fall before Him crying, "My Lord and my 
God!" "What shall we do," cried ancient scof- 
fers, "the whole world is gone after him?" The 
charge that ancient Pharisees made against him, 
"Thou being a man makest thyself God?" is in 
part true. Jesus does make himself God. Through 
twenty centuries he has been forcing men to say, 
"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God." 
Jesus in History! History without Him is a 
riddle. 



206 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

"The eternal step of Progress beats 
To that great anthem, calm and slow 
Which God repeats." 

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word 
was God, . . . and the Word was made Flesh 
and dwelt among us." 

The "heathen in his blindness" cries : 

"If Jesus Christ is a man, 
And only a man, — I say 
That of all mankind I will cleave to him 
And to him will I cleave alway. 

If Jesus Christ is a God, 

And the only God, — I swear 
I will follow Him through heaven and hell, 

The earth, the sea and the air." 

And the Christian, unable to sound the glories 
of this "God-Man," with all the raptures his 
heart feels is singing, 

"Oh for a thousand tongues to sing 
My dear Redeemer's praise! 
The wonders of my God and King, 
The triumphs of His grace." 

Out in the wastes of the great American desert, 
with its weary stretches of sand and cactus, there 
blooms a white flower. Men call it the "desert 
rose." The remarkable thing about it is that it 
seems to be self-nourished. Pluck it from the 
parched soil and it blooms as fair as ever. De- 
prive it of the moisture of the dews, and it still 
lives. Put it away in a dark cellar and it blos- 
soms on, with no dimming of its beauty. 



JESUS 207 

So is He. In moral deserts parched by pas- 
sion's fires, seared by the hot winds of unbelief, 
unwatered by any stream of love, be blooms a 
"desert rose," self-creating, self-energizing, self- 
accrediting, alone! 

II. As a Phophet. 

Jesus laid claim also to being a prophet. It is 
the prophet's business to speak for God. Jesus 
came with a message. Men recognized Him as a 
true prophet. Said Nicodemus, "We know thou 
art a teacher come from God." He came by 
prophets foretold. Isaiah calls Him Immanuel — 
God with us. That is the mission of the true 
prophet — to bring God down to men. When the 
first prophet came down from Sinai, it was with 
God's law in his hand and God's celestial light 
gleaming on his face. He was the "shadow of 
Him to come." "The law came through Moses, 
but grace and truth through Jesus Christ." 

Jesus asserted his superiority over all other 
prophets: "Ye have heard it is written," said he, 
"but / say unto you, I say unto you." "For I 
speak not from myself, but the Father that sent 
me, he hath given me a commandment, what I 
should say and what I should speak." "He that 
heareth my words and doeth them is like unto a 
man that built his house upon a rock." 

He allowed no peer as a teacher, and men were 
compelled to say, "Never man spake like this 
man." There are many jewelled thoughts in 
Plato, many beautiful maxims in Confucius. The 



208 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Vedic hymns contain many exalted thoughts. Aris- 
totle and Kant and Paschal, sound the depths of 
human wisdom. But the wisdom of Jesus is above 
them all. It is more than beauty, it is more than 
truth. It is life. It "bringeth life and immor- 
tality to light." It is beauty plus love. It is 
truth plus power. 

The message itself rings with the realities of 
God. Others had taught the Kingship of the 
Creator. Jeremiah, "the prophet of tears," had 
taught His awfulness as a Judge. Moses had re- 
vealed Him as the Great Lawgiver. Ezekiel as 
the Guider of Destiny. The psalmists had caugHt 
a faint, far-off vision of Him as the Father and 
Redeemer of the Jewish race. 

In the fullness of time, Jesus comes to tell of 
the Personal Fatherhood of God to every living 
soul ; and of a love determined to redeem and save 
to the uttermost. There is nowhere, save in Jesus* 
teaching, the story of the lost sheep and the prodi- 
gal son. Jesus reveals God as a Father and Re- 
deemer of the soul of man. These two concep- 
tions lift his teaching into a realm, where no other 
could ever enter. He is the "Peerless Prophet." 

Jesus is not without his message of Judgment. 
"Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, 
for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets and 
garnish the tombs of the righteous. Ye serpents, 
Ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye escape the 
judgment of hell!" "Ye are like unto whited 
sepulchres which outwardly appear beautiful, but 



JESUS 209 

inwardly arc full of dead men's bones and all un- 
cleanness." There is nothing weak nor effeminate 
about that. It has the ring of a true prophet. 

But Jesus' message of judgment only serves 
to throw out in grander relief his message of 
mercy. Sin is an awful thing, and it requires a 
wonderful redemption. Wherefore the surpass- 
ing message of Jesus is the message of the re- 
deeming sacrificing Father. He tells of the Father 
going out to meet the returning prodigal. He 
tells of the shepherd going out through the moun- 
tains "thunder-riven" to search for the lost sheep 
"until he find it." Then he tells the sinner of the 
way back home. "I am the Way." "By Me if any 
man enter in he shall be saved." "I am come that 
they might have life, and have it more abun- 
dantly." "Him that cometh unto me I will in no 
wise cast out." 

Never was there prophets's message sounded 
into the longing ears of man like the message of 
Jesus. It breathes the air of heaven's hope. It is 
water to the thirsty soul and bread to the hungry 
heart. It is the word that "returneth not void." 

III. As a Priest. 

The heart of Jesus' prophecy is Himself. His 
supreme mission he declared to be the mission of 
redemption. He was the God-man, and the pro- 
phet, in order that he might be the Saviour. "The 
Son of Man is come to give his life a ransom for 
many." "For God so loved the world that he 
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever be- 



210 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

lieveth on Him should not perish, but have eternal 
life." This is the heart of Jesus' gospel. It is 
the heart of all "good news." 

For the thing for which men have always been 
longing is salvation. The cry of the jailor of 
Philippi is the echo of that universal longing. No 
matter how far man has wandered, he is longing 
to be at one with God once more. He wants an 
at-one-ment. 

In the dramatization of General Wallace's 
Prince of India, the most dramatic moment of all, 
is when upon the ruined walls of Constantinople, 
at night, the Wandering Jew appears alone. As 
he sits there in the darkness, realizing that the 
passions of men have thwarted the atonement he 
has sought to make, there appears in the eastern 
sky a golden cross, but failing to catch its deep 
significance, he sees in it only the sign that he 
has failed, and he totters from the stage to an- 
other hundred years of wandering, hoarsely cry- 
ing, "I must atone, I must atone." 

How expressive is this scene of the universal 
feeling of the need of an atonement. On heathen 
altars incense fires are burning; heathen mothers 
are sacrificing their children, ascetics are disfig- 
uring their bodies, and Indians are bathing in the 
filthy Ganges. They are seeking to atone. 

In the ritual of the Jews, the priest slew upon 
the altar the sacrifice of atonement, and became 
the people's mediator. Jesus declared himself to 
be the true Priest and Mediator who became Him- 
self, the people's sacrifice. 



JESUS 2U 

There have been many theories to explain the 
simple fact that Jesus is man's atonement. 

We must get forever away from the idea that 
Jesus was a ransom, paid by God to the devil; 
that the evil one had such a hold on man that it 
was necessary for God to buy him back at the 
price of Jesus' sacrifice. 

Nor is it true that Jesus interposed himself 
between God's wrath and man ; that God demanded 
so much blood, for so much sin, and that His 
avenging hand fell upon His Son. Watts was 
mistaken when he sang : 

"Rich were the drops of Jesus' blood 
That calmed God's frowning face^ 
That sprinkled o'er the burning throne 
And turned His wrath to grace." 

Nowhere does the Bible represent that Jesus by 
his sacrifice bought the love of God for men. 
God's love is not the effect of Jesus' sacrifice, but 
the occasion of it. "God so loved . . . that he 
gave." God's love is first. 

And again the Bible does not teach that Jesus' 
suffering was endured to reconcile the Justice and 
Compassion of God. The idea that God had to 
punish sin, to satisfy his sense of Justice, but to 
save men the pain, decided to punish Jesus, is 
contrary to the Bible as it is to common sense. 
Jesus did not come to earth to save men from the 
punishment of their sins, but from the sins them- 
selves, and so from their punishment. "He shall 



212 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

save His people from their sins." To say that 
Jesus' death was a punishment for man's sin, is as 
absurd as to think that the bad child of a house- 
hold can be saved by punishing the good one. 

To get the true view of Jesus as an atonement, 
we must reverently enter the very counsels of 
God. 

Here is the Father. And yonder in the far 
country is the prodigal. All in vain have been 
the warnings of prophets, and the calls of the still 
small voice within. Man will not heed. He chooses 
the evil and not the good. Longing love is reach- 
ing toward him, but all in vain. Shall not the 
Father forgive his child, and let him go on? Shall 
he take a slight view of his sin and offer him an 
easy forgiveness? 

Would that kind of forgiveness save man from 
sin? Not a bit of it! If man is to be saved from 
sin he must be made to realize sin's awfulness. He 
must learn to hate it as God hates it. How can 
God, an invisible Spirit, reveal to man the awful- 
ness of his sin, and His hatred of it, and at the 
same time convey to man His desire to save? There 
is but one way — to go to man Himself. 

And so in the fullness of time, Jesus is born in 
the likeness of men. From the first He recog- 
nizes that it is His mission to save men from their 
sins. He proceeds straightway to tell them of its 
awful blight. He faces all men's temptations, and 
overcomes them — every one. He lives a perfect 
life, free from sin. He shows men the possibilities 



JESUS 213 

that lie within them as sons of God. He does per- 
fectly the will of God. He proclaims God's uni- 
versal love and He exemplifies it by a life of su- 
preme sacrifice and service. 

But as the days go by He comes to realize more 
and more that there is going to be demanded of 
Him the supreme sacrifice. Man will not see 
the folly of his sin, and turn from it until that sin 
has led him to the most awful depths of blasphemy, 
even to the slaying of the Son of God. So Jesus 
walks along the pathway of the cross. At last 
there comes a time when He has to choose between 
being true to His mission and renouncing it for- 
ever. He sees now that men will not turn from 
their sins, except they have set before them the 
example of perfect Love enduring the ultimate 
sacrifice. He must be "lifted up' 5 ere the hearts 
of men will be touched and turned to God. His 
final loyalty to his mission, is to bring upon Him 
the hatred of sinful men He has come to save ; and 
that hatred will bring Him to the cross. But as 
He hangs there men will at last see the awfulness 
of their sin, that has led them to a deed like this ; 
and they will see how wonderful is the love that 
endures all this for the sake of showing to them the 
way of life. They will see as they look upon the 
cross, what they have never seen before — that 
this victim of their sin is the Saviour. Then they 
will say, "I will take Him as my Redeemer, and 
I will follow in His footsteps back to God." 

Wherefore He says to his disciples, "I, if I be 



214 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

lifted up will draw all men unto me." Then He 
determines to drink the cup which His Father has 
given Him to its very dregs, and to be "faithful 
unto death, even the death of the cross." He 
"sets his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem," and 
never wavers nor falters till he cries with his 
breaking heart, "It is finished." 

And all through the centuries what Jesus fore- 
saw, has come to pass. Sinful men looking on the 
face of that dying Redeemer, have been moved to 
sorrow, by its suffering, for the sin that brought 
it there. They have said, "O, Rock of Ages, cleft 
for me," — and by me, — Thou art the Saviour. I 
will arise and follow Thee into the Kingdom of 
God." "I will take Thy humble, sacrificing spirit 
for mine own, and by Thy grace I will live Thy 
life." 

"Jesus, the very thought of Thee 

With sweetness fills my breast; 
But sweeter far Thy face to see 
And in Thy presence rest." 

Oh, glorious atonement! Oh, perfect priest! 
The veil of the shekinah is rent in twain, and 
there is revealed the sacrifice that saves. "Behold 
the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 
world." 

"Alone, O Love ineffable, 
Thy saving name is given; 
To turn aside from Thee is hell, 
To walk with Thee is heaven/' 



XV 
WHAT IS CHRISTIAN FAITH? 



"Nothing worthy proving can be proven 
Nor yet disproven. Wherefore be thou wise, 
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, 
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of faith! 
She reels not in the storm of warring words 
She sees the best that glimmers through the worst, 
She feels the sun is hid but for a night, 
She spies the summer through the winter bud, 
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls 
She finds the fountain where they wailed 'Mirage!' 

The clouds themselves are children of the sun 
And day and night are children of the sun, 
No night, no day! — But night enough is there 
In yon dark city. Get thee quickly back; 
Let be thy wail and help thy fellow men, 
And lay thine uphill shoulder to the wheel. 
And climb the mount of blessing, whence, if thou 
Look higher, then perchance thou mayest see 
The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day 
Strike on the Mount of Vision." 

Alfred Tennyson. 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN FAITH? 

Now faith is giving substance to things hoped 
for, and the test of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1. 

Faith without works is dead. James 2:26. 

There has been an age-long controversy in the 
Christian church as to whether it is what a man 
believes that saves him, or what he does. The 
theologian and the moralist have always been in 
conflict. The conclusion of the former is that it 
makes little difference what one does so long as 
he is orthodox. Two young men came not long 
ago before the examining body of their church 
for ordination into the Christian ministry. There 
was no question as to their character or spiritual 
fitness for the work before them. But they came 
within one vote of being rejected because they 
would not conform to a certain mechanical view 
of the inspiration of the Bible ; while an orthodox 
companion of theirs against whom there was a 
very serious moral charge, was unanimously ap- 
proved, because he was sound on doctrine. The 
theologians were in a majority. 

On the other side, the moralist would have us 
believe that it doesn't make any difference what 
one believes, so long as his deeds are right. Be- 
liefs are dead things, and creeds are the mummies 
of souls that have perished centuries ago. Deeds 
are the only things worth while, and a charitable 
atheist is a better man than a stingy believer. 

217 



218 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Now, both these men are right and both are 
wrong. They are right in conception and wrong 
in emphasis. They are extremists, and it is the 
extremists are responsible for most of the error 
that has crept into human thought. "No truth 
is so dangerous as a half truth," or an over- 
emphasized truth. 

In the middle ages the Roman church sank to 
such a low level of spiritual life that it offered 
men the practical purchase of heaven by the most 
senseless acts. Let him only say so many "Pater- 
nosters" and "Ave Marias," attend so many 
masses, pay so much into the treasury of the 
bishop, and he could do about as he pleased, and 
would be freed from all the pains of hell here and 
hereafter. 

When the Protestants revolted from Rome, they 
went to the other extreme. Deeds amounted to 
nothing. A man could not do anything that was 
pleasing to God. He was a "worthless worm" and 
all that he could do was to believe and tremble. 

This trouble arose in the church almost at its 
beginning. Paul, after his conversion had made 
a wide circuit of the heathen world, calling on 
men to "repent and believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ and they should be saved." Faith in Jesus 
as a personal Saviour, he declared to be the es- 
sential of salvation. 

The men who heard his message were heathen, 
and had lived long in heathen practices. They 
had been given over to lust, deceit and idolatry. 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN FAITH 219 

What now should they do with these practices? 
It was here that cunning theologians came to them 
and said, "Has not this Paul said that by your 
faith you are saved? Your life has nothing to do 
with it. Your creed is all. Christian liberty in 
Jesus makes you free. Christ has liberated you 
from the bondage of the moral law. Now you can 
do anything you like, so long as you believe on 
Christ." 

Then it was that practical men like James and 
the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, seeing the 
danger, wrote their circular letters to the new 
converts, explaining to them what Paul meant 
by faith. 

Christian faith is still a thing little understood. 
There is an idea prevalent that it is something 
opposed to reason. That it is a synonym for 
superstition, credulity, ignorance. The opponents 
of Christianity have tried to make men believe 
that Christian faith is something that crushes out 
the reason. Thomas Paine said: "A Christian is 
a crazy fool who never relies on his reason, but 
goes stumbling along in the darkness of priestly 
superstition." 

There are some who think faith is a mysterious 
something which is won by a few believers after a 
long process of preparation; a quality of soul 
granted to the favored few, which none else can 
understand. 

As a matter of fact, Christian faith is not op- 
posed to reason. It is an expression of the high- 



220 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

est reason. Nor is it a mysterious quality pos- 
sessed by the few of an inner circle. When the 
Bible speaks of faith the word has the same mean- 
ing it has in any other department of human ex- 
perience — no more — no less. Faith in Christ is 
the same in quality as is faith in any other friend. 
Faith underlies all life. On it is built the business 
of today. Credit is another name for it in the 
business world. It is the root of our friendships, 
our knowledge, our progress. 

It is also the principle behind all religious life. 
Jesus was always looking for faith. It was with 
him the secret of all power. He himself "could do 
no mighty works there because of their unbelief." 
Faith was the primal condition to all his mar- 
vellous cures. "According to your faith be it 
unto you." Nothing gladdened his heart like the 
discovery of one possessed of faith. Faith was 
to be the thing he should seek when he came again. 
Evidently faith is the key word to the religion of 
Jesus. 

Let us ask ourselves three questions about it. 
What is it? What does it do? How may I know 
if I possess it ? 

Faith — its meaning, its mission, its measure. 

I. What is it? 

Is it just mere belief? Turn to the apostles' 
creed. Read it sincerely and thoughtfully. "I 
Believe in God the Father Almighty." Is it faith 
to say that? Is that what Paul meant when he 
said: "Ye are saved by faith?" Does faith mean 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN FAITH 221 

the giving of our intellectual assent to a truth of 
God? Well, that is what a great many people 
think it is. If you only believe so and so, God 
will overlook all your faults. "He's a good fellow 
and 'twill all be well." 

I have talked with men about entering the re- 
sponsibilities and duties of an active Christian life, 
and they have said to me: "Oh, I believe all that 
your church people believe. There isn't a church 
that I can't go one better in the matter of belief. 
I belong to the Odd Fellows, the Masons and the 
Grand Army, and you know you have to have 
faith in God to belong to these orders." 

What does he mean by "having faith in God"? 
He means giving intellectual assent to the prin- 
ciples of God. Is that faith? Will that save? Not 
a bit of it. When has intellectual assent to a 
principle ever done anything for anybody? 

Here is a drowning man. His companions 
throw him a rope. He may believe in the power of 
the rope to save him. He may assent to its 
strength, its nearness to him; he may believe that 
by it his fellows intend to drag him to safety. 
But his beliefs in that rope are worthless. The 
thing that will save him is to reach and take it. 

Christian faith is not giving intellectual assent 
to the principle of Christ. It is not even assenting 
to Him as the Saviour of the world. There were 
plenty in his day who said to him "Lord, Lord,'* 
whom he plainly declared had no part in his king- 
dom. The world today is full of men who are say- 



222 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

ing, "I believe in God," and are going to their 
graves, practical atheists. 

Belief is not faith. The margin of the revised 
version tells us what it is; "Faith is giving sub- 
stance to things hoped for and the test of things 
not seen." Faith is action. It is not believing in 
nor hoping for something ; it is "giving substance" 
to that belief, that hope. It is believing some- 
thing, but it is more; it is doing something to 
make that belief real. 

"I believe in God the Father." That is intellec- 
tual assent. It becomes faith, when you begin to 
act like a child of God — giving substance to your 
belief in His Fatherhood. 

Here is a miner. He has been searching for 
gold. At last the indications have convinced him 
that there is a ledge of ore beneath his feet. How 
shall his belief become a living faith ? Dig a shaft, 
O miner ! 

Here is a man who has never been on a farm be- 
fore. But all the books he has read and all the 
testimony he has heard have convinced him that 
if he puts good seed into the ground, it will grow 
and return him thirty-fold. How is he to 
become a farmer of faith? Plant your seed, O 
farmer! Give substance to the thing you hope 
for ; test the things you cannot see. Then are you 
a farmer of faith. 

It will thus be seen that the theologian and the 
moralist are both wrong. Neither belief nor works 
is faith, but a combination of both. Faith is a 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN FAITH 223 

working belief. It is a combination of intellect 
and action. 

A colored slave and his master were crossing the 
Mississippi in a terrific storm. The master was 
rowing. Suddenly he ceased. Hope was gone. 
"Sambo, shall I row or pray?" "I guess you bet- 
tah mix 'em," was the reply. That is faith. The 
heroes spoken of in the eleventh chapter of He- 
brews as examples of surpassing faith were great 
believers. But they were men who gave substance 
to their belief and tested the things they hoped 
for. 

"By faith, Noah, warned of things not yet seen, 
built an ark." "By faith Abraham, being tried, 
offered up isaac." "By faith Moses, refused 
to be called the son of pharaoh's daughter 
and forsook egypt," "By faith the walls of Jer- 
icho fell down, after they had compassed them 

SEVEN DAYS." 

Believing — doing, these are the component 
parts of a working faith. 

II. What does a faith like this do? What is 
its mission? Its mission is to save. "By faith are 
ye saved." "Thy faith hath saved thee." Faith 
is always a saviour. It is the faith of the farmers 
that saves our country from famine every year. 
They believe that if seed is put into the ground 
there will be a harvest, and they give substance to 
that belief. It is the faith of parents and teach- 
ers, who believe that every child born into this 
world has the germ of an intellect, that saves us 



224 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

from intellectual death. For they give substance to 
that belief by sacrifices of time and money to edu- 
cate the youth. It is the faith we have in one an- 
other that makes possible business and political 
life. We give substance to our belief that men are 
essentially honest and law abiding, by organizing 
empires and founding industries. 

And what so readily applies to our bodies and 
our minds and our relationships one with the 
other, applies also to our immortal spirits and our 
relationships with God. We are saved to immor- 
tal life by our faith in Immortality. Not by our 
belief in it as an intellectual fact, but by our will- 
ingness to do immortal things and acquire immor- 
tal qualities, giving substance to our belief. 

If instinct and revelation teach us anything at 
all, they teach us plainly that Immortality is 
bound up in our relationship to God, and faith in 
Him which does His works is what saves. It will 
not save a man to say, "I believe in God the Fa- 
ther," and then act like a child of the devil. Such a 
man is not saved. He is lost. His belief has no 
substance. A business friend of mine used to tell 
me occasionally that he believed in fire insurance. 
A year later I stood with him beside the charred 
ruins of his store. I asked him what his insurance 
was. "I haven't any," said he, "this building was 
new and fireproof, and I didn't think there was 
any need of being in a hurry." Poor fellow, he 
believed, but he did not have faith. The labors of 
years were lost. 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN FAITH 225 

A certain evangelist has a card and on one side 
of it is written, "What must I do to be saved?" 
And the answer is, "Have faith in God." On the 
other side is the question, "What must I do to be 
lost?" The answer is, "Nothing." It is true. 
The faith that saves is the faith that is doing 
something. And salvation is not being saved here- 
after from the penalty of sin ; but is the salvation 
that saves from sin itself, both here and hereafter. 
"This is the victory that overcometh the world, 
even your faith." 

This is why Paul is so insistent on faith in 
Jesus Christ as a Saviour from sin. This Jesus 
who was crucified and rose again was a mainspring 
of action. Belief in Him not only filled the heart 
with saving beliefs, but it put into the heart an un- 
dying dynamic that worked them out into life. 
That is why Paul said, "It is not I that do the 
works, but Christ that worketh in me." Faith in 
Christ is a saving faith because it impregnates the 
mind with saving beliefs, and offers the dynamic 
that gives them substance. This is why the Mas- 
ter could make the bold claim, "I am the Way, the 
Truth, and the Life." This is why he branded as 
hypocrites those who said, "Lord, Lord," and did 
not the things which he said. 

By faith the world is saved. By faith souls are 
saved. By faith we are saved. 

"Despise not then thy father's ancient faith; 
Of his pure life it was the golden thread. 
It worked bright glories in his every breath 



226 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

Till death laid low the dear and reverend head. 

From olden faith how many a glorious deed 

Hath lit the world ; its blood-stained banner led 

The martyrs heavenward ; yea, it was the seed 

Of knowledge, whence our modern freedom spread. 

For never hath man's faith been proved a snare, 

But a deliverance, a sign, a flame 

To purify the dense and pestilent air, 

Writing on pitiless heavens one pitying Name 

And 'neath the shadow of the dread eclipse 

It shines on dying eyes and pallid lips." 

III. We should like to possess a faith like this. 
How may we know that it is ours? What are the 
tests of a saving faith? There is but one test, 
and it is very simple: "Faith without works is 
dead." When a man dies he looks much the same 
as he did before. But the thing that distinguishes 
him from other men and makes him a dead man, is 
that he is doing nothing. He is not even breath- 
ing. A dead faith is like that. It simply lies still 
and makes no move. It is not faith at all, any 
more than a dead man is a man. 

How may you know you possess a saving faith? 
Well, what are you doing? Are you doing noth- 
ing? Are you just believing, saying your 
prayers, going through the forms of worship as a 
matter of habit? You may be sure of it, your 
faith is dead. 

"If faith produce no works, I see 
That faith is not a living tree. 
For faith and works together grow; 
No separate life they e'er can know; 



WHAT IS CHRISTIAN FAITH %M 

They're soul and body; hand and heart; 
What God hath joined no man ean part." 

Or, on the other hand, if you are living in a 
gospel of good deeds only, and despise the sturdy 
beliefs that are behind every true character ; if you 
think the external performance of perfunctory 
charities is the key to heaven here and hereafter, 
you are mistaken. The motive, the character back 
of every good deed, determines its worth. Altru- 
ism and morality, apart from character, have no 
saving quality. The real test of faith is charac- 
ter. It is character that saves. 

What is my character? Is it honest through 
and through? Are men impressed by what I am 
and do with the truth of God? Do they get a 
vision of His purity and holiness by what I am 
and do? Do they understand more of the love 
of God when I pass them? Do they "take knowl- 
edge of me that I have been with Jesus?" If I 
have a living faith they will. They will say, 
"There goes a man who professes to love the Mas- 
ter, and he does love Him, for he does the things 
the Master commanded. He believes what the 
Master taught, and he does what the Master asked 
him to do. He is kind, gentle, forgiving, patient, 
loving, brave, meek, full of service. Wherever he 
goes, men feel as if Jesus Himself had been there. 
He lets his light shine that men may see his good 
works. He goes into all the world bearing his 
Master's 'good news.' He is a man of faith." 

When a man dies the last test to determine if 



228 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

life still exists, is to place a mirror over his lips. 
If a film ever so slight gathers on its surface, it is 
a sign that there is still hope. Will your faith 
meet the mirror test? If it will, all is not lost. 
You are calling, "Lord, Lord." Yes, but are you 
"doing the things which he says"? Remember 

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not 

breaths ; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count the time by heart throbs. He most 

lives 
Who believes most, feels noblest, acts best/' 

This is the kind of a faith that "hath subdued 
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained prom- 
ises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the 
power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from 
weakness hath been made strong, waxed mighty in 
war, and turned to flight the armies of aliens." 

"Oh, for a faith that will not shrink 
Though pressed by many a foe; 
That will not tremble on the brink 
Of poverty or woe. 

Lord, give me such a faith as this. 

And then, whate'er may come, 
I taste e'en now the hallowed bliss 

Of an eternal home." 



XVI 

DOES THE WORLD NEED A NEW 
RELIGION? 



"We ought to discern the real strength of Chris- 
tianity and revive the ancient passion for Jesus. It 
is the distinction of our religion: it is the guarantee 
of its triumph. Faith may languish; creeds may be 
changed; churches may be dissolved; society may be 
shattered. But one cannot imagine the time when 
Jesus will not be the fair image of perfection, or the 
circumstances wherein He will not be loved. He can 
never be superseded; He can never be exceeded. 
Religions will come and go, the passing shapes of an 
eternal instinct, but Jesus will remain the standard 
of the conscience and the satisfaction of the heart, 
whom all men seek, in whom all men will yet meet." 
Ian Maclaren, "The Mind of the Master/ 9 

"Be not the first by whom the new is tried, 
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside." 

Pope, "Essay on Criticism." 

"Christianity is the only religion which is adapted 
to meet them (the higher needs of man), and, accord- 
ing to those who are alone able to testify, does so 
most abundantly. All men, of every sect, nationality, 
etc., agree in their account of their subjective experi- 
ence, so as to this there can be no question. The only 
question is as to whether they are all deceived. " 

George J. Romanes, "Thoughts on Religion/' 



DOES THE WORLD NEED A NEW 
RELIGION? 

When that which is perfect is come, then that 
which is in part shall be done away. First Corin- 
thians 13: 10. 

Religion has been variously defined. Gruppe 
declares it to be "the invention of priests," who 
hoped by the advantages they could offer to men 
through its practice to gain power over them. 
Seneca says it is "to know and worship God." 
Kant says, "Religion is our recognition of Divine 
duties as commands." Martineau, "Religion is 
the belief in and worship of Supreme Mind and 
Will, directing the universe, and holding moral re- 
lations with human life." Goethe, "A feeling of 
reverence for what is above, around and beneath 
us." Newman, "The knowledge of God, of Will, 
and of our Duties to Him." The author of 
"Faiths of the World," "Communion between wor- 
shipping subject and worshipped object — commu- 
nion of man with what he believes to be a God." 

We might multiply these definitions to infinity, 
and yet fail to grasp the real essence of religion. 
Some are too high and some are too low. All lack 
comprehensiveness. Most are theoretical and im- 
practical. 

Acting on the principle that the simplest defi- 
nition is the clearest, we may define religion as an 
effort on the part of man to live the life of God. 

231 



232 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

This definition is all-inclusive. It recognizes the 
lowest fetichism, and the highest Christianity. It 
takes note of the progressive character of revela- 
tion, and admits a wide divergence in men's views 
of God. It is intensely practical, making religion 
a life; while it in no way sets discounts those 
many methods by which men have tried to come 
into that life, which in common language we call 
"the religious." 

That external form of religion, then, is the 
highest, which best enables us to "live the life of 
God." All through the ages men have been "feel- 
ing after God, if haply they might find him." As 
they have reached out after Him, the voice of 
Deity has not been silent, for at "sundry times 
and in divers manners" the Infinite has drawn the 
veil of mystery aside and a voice has cried, "Be- 
hold your God." In it all we have been rising, 
steadily rising. 

At last, about two thousand years ago, there 
was born in Bethlehem of Judea, one who claimed 
to be a perfect Son of God. He told men the 
secret of his life, and offered them freely the bless- 
ing He possessed, as his gift of love. "I am," said 
he, "the Way into the life of God; I am the Truth 
that life embodies ; I am the Life itself. He that 
folio weth after me shall have this Life." 

For more than nineteen centuries this Man, His 
life, and His teaching, have shaped the history of 
civilized humanity. Indeed, He has been the 
Maker of civilization, and the key to that higher 



A NEW RELIGION 233 

plane of living we call Christendom. Countless 
millions have found Him to be the way into the 
life of God, the key to the heaven of their heart's 
desire. 

Of late not a few voices have been telling us 
that Christianity has outlived its usefulness — that 
we need a new religion. The magazines, the news- 
papers and not a few of the scholars of our day 
are pleading for what they call "the religion of 
the future." 

It is not surprising that of late a great many 
religions have been born, nor that their followers 
are many. Many Christians are in a panic, for 
they think that the Rock of Ages has been blasted, 
and the religion in which their fathers lived and 
died set aside forever. They are calling, "If the 
foundations be destroyed what can the righteous 
do?" 

It is fitting that the Christian should face this 
question fairly. If the world does need a new 
religion, by all means let us have it. We should 
not cling to old things because they were good 
enough for our fathers. Our ancestors travelled 
through the forests in an ox cart; they lighted 
their homes with a tallow dip, and bathed in a 
teacup. But we must have Pullman trains and 
electricity and porcelain baths. There is no sense 
in our singing, " 'Tis the old time religion and it's 
good enough for me." 

Nor should we accept a thing simply because it 
is new and more attractive than the old. There 



234 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

is no virtue in mere novelty. The flying machine 
offers us very fair promises, but unless it can fur- 
nish us the three things we want in travel, — speed, 
comfort and safety, — better than the old way, it 
will never be universally adopted. The faddist in 
religion is especially to be despised. 

What then is this "New Religion?" Do we 
want it? Is it better than the old? 

So varied are its forms that a definition is im- 
possible. Some of the names by which it goes are 
"Christian Science," The New Thought," "The 
New Theosophy," "Modern Spiritualism," and a 
dozen others. In spite of these varied names a 
kinship may be discovered in all. They are relig- 
ions of culture. Their philosophy of life is, "Be 
good and you will be happy." Seek to lift your- 
self out of the physical, and live exclusively in the 
realm of the spiritual. Think beautiful thoughts 
and do beautiful deeds, and your life will become 
the beautiful thing it was intended to be. 

How very attractive all this is ! It is, we are 
told, to be the "religion of the future." Surely 
we should grasp at anything that is an advance 
over the past. What do we expect of our religion 
anyway? What is an ideal religion? A religion, 
to win our acceptance, must have some definite 
qualities that commend it to our sense. 

It must first of all be Practical and not Theo- 
retical. 

We do not want our religion to give us beautiful 
theories about things. We want it to do things 



A NEW RELIGION 235 

for us. The religion we accept must have a dyna- 
mic that shall help us to live the life of God. A 
religion of beautiful theories only is as sounding 
brass and tinkling cymbal. Poetic raptures, 
aesthetic revels and dreamy contemplations, that 
satisfy our intellectual yearnings, are at best a 
poor religion. History offers us no sadder pic- 
ture than the theologians spending days of pre- 
cious time discussing how many spirits could 
stand on the point of a needle ! 

From our religion we expect results, not 
theories. The paganism of Greece and Rome 
passed, because with all its Gods and Goddesses, 
it was doing nothing for men. 

What dynamic has the new religion to offer? 
It offers the dynamic of culture. "You ought to 
be good and live the life of God because it is 
ethically beautiful. ... It will help you to self- 
realization and improve the social fabric." 

That dynamic may serve the purposes of the 
cultured few, but what kind of a power is it to 
transform a loveless world, which does not care for 
self-realization and the improvement of the social 
fabric? There have been plenty of religions of 
culture. The Appian Way of history is strewn 
with the tombs of dead religions that have told 
men they ought to "be good." The dynamic of 
theory and culture has failed utterly. 

What is the dynamic of Christianity? Love — 
devotion to a person. Than this, the world 
knows no higher force. It has conquered the wil- 



236 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

derness, fought battles, built kingdoms, nerved 
men to heroism and patient suffering. Tennyson 
tells us of the power of this dynamic. A soldier 
stands facing the foe and across his fancy comes 
the picture of wife and home 

"Thy voice is heard through rolling drums, 
That beat the battle where he stands; 
Thy face across his fancy comes 
And gives the battle to his hands. 

A moment while the trumpet blows 
He sees his brood about thy knee; 

The next, on fire, he meets the foe, 

And strikes him dead for thine and thee." 

For nineteen centuries now Christianity has 
been offering men this surpassing motive — devo- 
tion to a Perfect Person, Jesus Christ. This is 
the dynamic that has "turned the world upside 
down" and has led men everywhere to cry out of 
renewed and transformed life, "the love of Christ 
constraineth us." 

The second element in the ideal religion must 
be a recognition of two facts of human experi- 
ence. 

First, the fact of sin and evil. There is the 
echo of a universal longing in the cry of the 
jailor of Philippi, "What must I do to be saved?" 
The greatest hindrance to living the life of God 
is "the sin that doth so easily beset us." 

Secondly, the ideal religion must concern itself 
with the social fact — our relationship one to an- 



A NEW RELIGION 237 

other. We want a religion that will solve the 
problems of labor and capital, the poor, the crimi- 
nal, the race question, the home, social morality, 
and a hundred others. Whether we like it or no 
we have to live together here. "No man liveth 
unto himself." 

What is the attitude of the new religion to these 
problems? "There is no sin" it frequently as- 
serts. "Sin and evil are only a feeling of unattain- 
ment." Disease, death and the other marks of 
sin's havoc are a "disease of mortal mind." Con- 
cerning the great social problems, the new relig- 
ion is silent. It has no motive to send out to 
the hovel and the den. It is a religion of self 
realization, and it will not admit that the prob- 
lems of life are real. 

On the contrary, the religion of Jesus abounds 
in the idea that sin and evil are real, the one hin- 
drance to living the life of God. And it addresses 
itself to the task of ridding the world of both. Its 
dominant idea is an at-one-ment, whereby men 
shall live the life of God It aims to make man's 
life and God's one, by lifting man up to God. It 
does not do it by telling him to be good and pull 
himself up by his own bootstraps. It presents us 
God himself co-operating with man in achieving 
his Divine destiny. 

Christianity addresses itself also to the social 
problem. In the two great commandments pecu- 
liar to her teaching, unselfish love for God and 
man, is found the secret of social Utopia. And all 



238 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

these centuries Christianity has gone definitely 
about the task of bringing men to live in right 
relationship to one another, not by offering so- 
ciety palliatives, but a cure. And the final recog- 
nition of the supreme laws of the religion of Jesus 
is the only means of ushering in that perfect so- 
ciety men are pleased to call "the Kingdom of 
Heaven." 

The third element of the ideal religion is that 
it be universal in its character and application. 

We want no provincial or class religion. The 
religion that abides must fit the needs of the bush- 
man of Australia as readily as those of his Anglo- 
Saxon king. It must be equally potent for the 
drunkard of the lower Bowery and the millionaire 
on Fifth Avenue. The ignorant laborer must find 
it as inspiring to his soul as does the college presi- 
dent. It must answer the cry of "the heathen in 
his blindness" as readily as the most gifted child 
of light. 

Does the proposed religion do this? It does 
not. It is destined always to be the possession 
of the cultured few. It has no missionary motive 
that will carry it to the ignorant and the outcast. 
Even if it did it would fail miserably. It has no 
appeal to men in the common walks of life. It 
will never control China, India and Africa. The 
religion that wins these lands will be one that 
flows with the real, red blood of Divine love and 
yearning affection. It will never save the drunk- 
ard and the harlot, nor touch the thief upon the 
cross. 



A NEW RELIGION 239 

On the other hand, behold the religion of 
Jesus. There is not a corner of the globe where 
her banner of love is not already planted, and 
wherever she goes, in marble palaces or bush huts, 
among savages or the cultured, there are men 
made better by her presence — there men learn to 
live more nearly the life of God. Following her en- 
trance into men's hearts have come the blessings 
of civilization, of happiness, of love, of peace. 
Wherever the name of Jesus is sounded, there is 
born new hope, new life. 

Lastly, the ideal religion must be constructive 
and not destructive. 

Religion is more than getting rid of things. It 
is "living the life of God." Not only getting rid 
of evil, but putting on positive holiness. A re- 
ligion that does not build the sterner qualities of 
character is a religion of mush — worthless. The 
religions of heathenism and Judaism have passed 
because they spent their energies on the problem 
of Expiation. The true religion will not only re- 
fute error, but it will establish truth. It will not 
only destroy evil, but it will construct a new 
society. 

The new religion is not a builder. Its followers 
are concerned more about "ringing out the old" 
than they are "ringing in the new." They walk like 
Vandals through the temple and tear down our 
most precious beliefs and hopes, and offer us noth- 
ing to take their place save a few hazy dreams. 
Their creeds are negative. They deny the most 



240 THE ETERNAL RIDDLE 

common experiences of the heart, — the sense of a 
personal God, of forgiveness, of sin itself. They 
leave the city of God in ruins and build no better 
city. They take the King of the universe from 
His throne and leave it empty. 

Meanwhile, by the power of its constructive 
gospel, the religion of Jesus has quietly, persis- 
tently been building up a kingdom of love among 
men. It offers a positive faith. Its commands 
are not, "Thou shalt not," but rather, "Do ye." 
It plants itself by the side of other religions, and 
by the sheer grandeur of its constructive life 
builds a kingdom, above, beneath, around them. 

The flowers once held a council together, and a 
discussion arose as to the merits of the sun, as a 
producer of fragrant and beautiful blossoms. 

The trillium was heard to speak: "I think we 
need a new sun in the heavens. For years now he 
has been shining in the sky, and I cannot see that 
I am one whit better for it. My petals are just 
as pale as ever; I have no more fragrance than 
my ancestors generations ago. Let us have a new 
sun in the sky." 

"But I," replied a beautiful red rose, "have 
found this same sun a wonderful help to me. It 
is he who warms my petals, puts the color into 
them. His breath is my fragrance. The trouble 
with you, trillium, is that you stay there in the 
darkness of the wood and never let him shine upon 
you. You do not need a new sun. You need to 
get into the light of the old." 



A NEW RELIGION 241 

The religion of Jesus grows and expands as 
the ages roll, but at heart it is the same. What 
the world needs is not a new religion, but a more 
consistent application of the old. The world has 
yet to see a religion that offers men the power, 
the hopes, the comforts, the satisfactions of the 
religion of Jesus. "The religion of the future," 
says Nietzsche, "will be a religion of golden laugli- 
ter." If so, it will be the religion of Jesus, for His 
religion is the one key that unlocks the gates of 
the City of God where there is "joy forevermore." 

"When in scenes of glory 

We sing the new, new song, 
'Twill be the old, old story 

That we have loved so long." 



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